An Interesting Experience with Oktoberfest

So... it's Sunday night, I have one class in the morning and haven't really prepared anything for it. I know I will and I will probably get into bed late perhaps, but that's life. Some of you may know a tiny bit about what I did on my weekend this week. Me and 5 of my fellow Americans in the Czech Republic took an adventure down to the great nation of Deutchland (that's Germany) to a wonderful small town named Munich for a local festival called Oktoberfest. Yes, the name is deceiving, for it is really held mainly in September, but that's life. In order to search for the best prices on travel as possible, I searched and searched, and I felt that I had finally found the best deals. So we were all to meet up in a city in Western Czech Republic called Cheb. but our plans very quickly changed from what I had seen as the most profitable scheme to get us there cheaply and by nightfall.

Our bus was full! I don't know how this happened, but it was, and it sucked. So, me and Chrissy and Laura had to wait for another hour for the next free bus to come by. The good thing about this bus ride was that we had seats on the bus, the bad thing is, is that these buses are packed and people actually stand in the aisles the entire ride. So, when I think about it, I think that we could have gotten on the earlier bus, but we would have had to stand. And our bus being 3 hours, it would have sucked. But it was cheap. So we all finally got to Cheb, a few hours behind schedule, and desperately looking for the prime deal to get us to Munich before morning so as to maximize our time at this wonderful festival. Our options ended up being to try and get t Nurnberg and spend the night in the train station or take a train to Plzen and take a night bus to Munich. It was the only sure bet for us, yet, we were not sure if we would be standing on the5 hour bus ride there. Oh yea, and we were not sure how much the price was. We were hoping it was going to be cheap also for we don't want to spend this money that we teach for. So we got on the bus, and I ask the man how much for a ticket to munich. And he says 1050 kc. We were hoping to pay no more than 500 kc, so this totally sucked and this means that we pretty much paid what we would have for a normal train. That's about 40 bucks to you all. Way expensive for Czechs, normal for Western Europeans and you Americans. So that sucked. We got on the train at 130 and got there 530. The ride was kinda fun though. I wasn't allowed to sleep pretty much though. I talked to Petr the guy next to me for the first hour. He's from Slovakia and was excited to experience Oktoberfest. And then we made a pit stop for about half hour or so, and then for like two and a half hours more I spent talking to this German named Martin. It was pretty sick. He was in front of me and we talked about world politics to world travel to world religion. It was crazy. He seemed very open to my explanation of Christianity (and though I thought about what I was telling him, and I thought that it would have totally creeped me out if I were him) it was really awesome his response. He thinks that he will be a Christian someday, but still is checkin everything out. He was a Buddhist, but last year he spent traveling Australia, and Asia, and seeing Buddhist and their lives made him reconsider. He's a pretty steller guy. And then I got to sleep for the last half hour

So... we arrived to Munich at 530 and we chilled and slept in the bus station for like 2-2.5 hours. It was really super cold, probably like 40's or something. Sucked a bunch. But come 730ish, we finally got a group ticket for transportation lines and boarded the S-Bahn (like a Metro) and headed into the heart of Munich with all the other foreigners from all over the place. Then we got there and it was pretty sweet. At 830, there were people walking around and goofin off all over the place in their Bavarian garb. We walked around for a little bit, got some Euros from the ATM and then got some pastries and a bakery. It was good to be back in a place that looked familiar (I was here last summer for 4 days). So, time came, about 10 when we finally ventured off into the great festival of Oktoberfest. It was packed. There were people everywhere and no one spoke German! I would try asking people questions when need be, and no one understood. Totally crazy. So anyways, we finally found a place to sit, outside one of the big tents, and we chilled here for about an hour and got something to drink. By the time we had left our table at 11, people were singing songs, yelling, making jolly good noises to everyone around. It's like a giant birthday party pretty much.

So then after this we walked around for a little while longer and and saw the masses and masses of people that had come to attend this grand event. I believe that some sick amount of people are supposed to attend Oktoberfest during the 2-3 weeks that it goes on. Like 6 million maye? Maybe at least 3 million. So, we walked around some more and showed the newbies the town. By this time though I was stupid tired and just wanted to sleep, so I took a nap in one of the gardens when some others went on a walk. So we hopped on the 5 pm train back to Munich, and this one was much more planned out and we got our cheap tickets all the way back to Prague, not payin more than 10 bucks. It was a long weekend, but it was fun, and I'm glad I went but I am glad to be back. Great trip for the memories. I'll try and include some pics here fairly quickly as well.