Day 87 – to München and Oktoberfest
- Our usual morning: cook/eat/clean/pack.
- Our Uber driver told us a weird/cool fact: Augsburg is the #2 city in Germany for safety. He seemed quite proud of that statistic.
- When going to the platform for our train, I spied an ACAB sticker. It’s nice to see that that sentiment made it across the pond. I told him that I think every LEO I worked with at police academy would probably agree. They’d be embarrassed by the true bad guys, but I think they’d say you have to be a bit of a bastard to be a cop. That’s the same reason I started taking the time to blur random people out of our photos. What if one of them is a Luigi?
- After a very quick (and pretty) train ride, we were in München. As we were getting off the train, another couple was doing the same. They must have heard us speaking English and began to chat. They had one day in München before heading home to Erie, Colorado. Small world.
- Our hotel was only a couple of blocks away from both the station and from the big party. Unfortunately, our room wasn’t ready.
- While we waited in the lobby, we ate our sandwiches, we discussed extending the end of our trip with some time in Canada. We can’t get a direct flight anyway, so an intentional, four-day layover in one of the cities we haven’t yet been to sounds like a nice way to break up the trip home. While musing and waiting, we also watched a family of four come in with way too much crap. Between them, they had 18 bags, and only 2 were small purses and at least six were massively-large cases. Apparently, another couple will be joining them. I hoped they would arrive before our room was ready, but that didn’t happen.
- Once at Oktoberfest, we headed into a beer tent. We found a table and were told we only had 45 minutes before the evening reservations. There was some language-barrier confusion with our order, but we eventually got my 1L of beer. At 5’3”, I felt like a hobbit. “It comes in liters??”
- I bought a floral headband with some orange and green in it. #theU
- Here are some numbers. There are 14 large beer tents. They each hold over 6,000 people inside (see a small clip in our video for scale) and another 2,000 outside. There are also 20 smaller tents that hold about a thousand each. That’s over 135,000, not counting the people outside in the midway, shopping, and just wandering around and not counting the overlap between the day drinkers and those with reservations for the evening. We knew it was big, but it was enormous…bigger than any college game day, and nearly as big as the twin cities we used to live in. The bonus for us was that the tents were just about all adults. In large part, kids were barely even there. That makes sense as there is nothing for them (at least that we saw). Apparently, 350,000 to 400,000 visit the fest each day; that’s about the size of New Orleans, Louisiana.
- We witnessed a funny thing about tables. Apparently, you are to finish (or leave) your beer at your table. If you try to sit at a different one, the server will chase you away. We saw it happen at the next table and didn’t understand. Then, we told people they could sit with us and she did it again. We asked why (as politely as we could), so she explained. They make money when they sell a beer. As servers, they can’t afford to let people sit in their section when they got beer from someone else. That makes sense. We thanked her for explaining it to us. You don’t see people walking around with beer at the fest (which is odd since they do that in the street). No one is carrying these massive 1L glass beer mugs around in a crowd, while shopping/eating, or while waiting in line to ride a roller coaster. Since everyone finishes their beer in a single beer tent, theoretically, it could all work out on balance, but no single server can risk being the one that gets screwed, so it’s a rule.
- Not much time passed before other people (who hadn’t ordered beer) wanted to sit with us. VaTech and Virginia fans Austin and Morgan were celebrating his birthday and the eve of their first anniversary; they were seeing München for Oktoberfest, Venice, and Dublin. We also met German-Italian (or Italian-German?) Manuella (who visits Oktoberfest and Ibiza every year). They were all lovely. It’s nice to welcome others to join our table.
- We got dinner too; he had sausage, potato salad, and apple strudel. I had a vegetarian dish that was a ball of dough, and mushrooms in a cream sauce. It was quite filling and rich; I could only eat half of it.
- We saw lots of really nice dirndln and lederhosen.
- We saw one guy end his night early. The staff handled it amazingly well.
- The festival bands are inside the massive beer tents. That’s where most of the music fun is located. The bands are on giant 2-3m-high stages in the middle. People often stand on the benches (maybe to see better?). But most of the available seating without reservations is in the beer gardens, with a playlist of pop songs, and with the smokers. Dear dawgs, why do they all smoke cigarettes?? Haven’t they heard of cancer? And why is there so much Abba? This isn’t a cruise!
- Walking through the midway was a ton of fun.
- On the way out, he grabbed a hot dog and then we hit a store for drinks on the way back to the hotel.
Day 88 – Oktoberfest, again
- We found breakfast at Sara’s Halal place next door to our hotel. We had yummy skewers of meat and giant pita/naan style bread.
- It was a dreary day, but we knew we’d be fine if it rained.
- On the way to the ‘fest, we saw a bike with a canopy to keep the rain away. It was a clever gizmo.
- Just inside the festival, big horses (but not as big a Clydesdales) were pulling heavily-decorated beer wagons.
- Our first tent was quite full, but we found seats in the biergarten. They had good food (curry worst and mashed potatoes) and we eventually made some good “prost” friends.
- At our second tent, we found really great prost friends who hate our current state of things as much as we do. Even though we all agreed, I found it difficult to discuss this. We could have learned from Deutschland, but we apparently chose not to. It’s so embarrassing to have Hitler 2.0. Still, Thomas and his friend were happy to know that we were visiting their country.
- Our third tent had long-ass bathroom lines but great beer and fun. We met a fabulous German couple. We also met a whole gaggle of Americans.
- Oktoberfest was a great experience and is a must-do bucket list item. And if we ever come back, we might even just stay in Augsburg. A thirty-minute commute at each end of an all day event isn’t a burden at all.
Day 89 – to Nürmberg
- Travel day routine: evil alarm, breakfast (at our hotel this time; and boy howdy did they put out a spread!), pack, rest until 11am.
- The walk to the train was pretty crowded with people going to the fest and some construction that narrowed the sidewalks. I’ll never understand some European pedestrian cultures. Londoners were right on our tails the whole time. When you are travelling and keeping your wits about you, that adds a lot of stress. Yes, the city is crowded, but we were never in a place that didn’t have room for personal bubbles. Germany was worse than London. One guy was almost pushing past us in the areas where there was only room for one person in each direction, but then he’d be behind us again. You know the guy that nearly runs you off the road, but then he’s at your next red light? This was him, but in pedestrian form.
- At the station, we were an hour early, so we got to do some people watching:
- Saw a guy carrying a shoulder bag and a 2’x4’ sheet of plywood.
- One guy forgot his undies and belt, so his butt crack showed. We only noticed him because we saw a woman point it out to her partner.
- The majority of it all was an absolute parade of festival-goers.
- It seems that during the festival, they have much longer trains coming and going. We had seats at B (rare at many European train stations), so we didn’t want to leave there until we had to, but the F section of the platform was so far down that we couldn’t see it from B. Luckily, the longer trains also came with longer boarding times, so we didn’t have to rush to get on the next-to-last car in a very long line of them.
- It was a very quick ride to Nuremberg.
- As soon as we settled in, we headed out for lunch. On our way, we spied half a dozen Viking cruise busses. Turns out, Nuremberg is a starting point for some of their river cruises.
- Our late lunch, a smash burger place, had really good cheese fries.
- We then did a little looking at bags at TK Maxx (no idea why they are a K over here instead of a J), and hit a grocery store for some provisioning.
- We came back to our hotel at about 4pm. I couldn’t believe it was still that early in the day. I was spent.
- I did a tiny bit of work and then laid down to my YouTubes. I also didn’t sleep very consistently; part of our night was punctuated with screaming drunks at 4am. But what sleep I got was good. Turns out, the weather may have played a role in that.
Day 90 – casual day in Nürnberg
- We slept in, made breakfast, did ”big” laundry (with an in-room washer/dryer that played funny “music”), and gamed/worked/watched for the late morning and early afternoon. It was nice and quiet. We made plans to hang out in the room until after lunch and then venture out into the Old Town (inside the city old walls) where we were staying.
- We discovered that for the third time, we were staying in the Little East neighborhood.
- They have a cute old town. It reminded us of Colmar and Strausbourg.
- We smelled weed. That made me miss home just a little bit. I don’t actually smoke it hardly ever (gummies are more my thing), but I missed the occasional waft of it.
- And then around the corner and down a street, we chatted with the clerk at a headshop about weed in Germany. By the look on his face, Colorado is his idea of paradise.
- We saw groups of men in matching lederhosen/vests/hats. There must have been a small Oktoberfest nearby.
- For a break, we stopped at a cafe to sit and sip where we had a very funny server.
- Malbec for me.
- The Bottle?
- No, just a glass.
- I have to ask. It’s Saturday and anything can happen.
- Him: Bottle of Coke.
- We were treated to an entire performance of verifying the label, the sniff/taste test of a small amount, and then the actual pour. He offered a carafe so it could breathe and told him to wait 20 minutes for the temperature to level and the flavors to open up.
- We walked around some more, and found a flea market. He got a sausage sandwich, we saw their version of Oktoberfest (maybe), we walked by some more cute stuff, and then we headed back to our hotel. The pool is indoor and open until 2300. The rooftop deck never closes to guests.
- Back at the room, we started another load of laundry (mostly because we could), he checked the start of some of the football games, and I tuned into my shows.
- The pool was way too cold. We both got in, but didn’t stay. The dry/cedar sauna was living on residual heat and wasn’t on. It was disappointing. We just went back to the room. After he changed, he popped up to the roof and said the city is too dark to see much (good for them for not having a bunch of light pollution). We planned to go up there during the day and check out the view.
Day 91 – Nürnberg Nuremberg State Museum of Art and Design, old gate
- After breakfast, I did some lounging while he “worked” a little.
- When we headed out, we went to the New Museum – Nuremberg State Museum of Art and Design. It was a very nice building and only a €2 entry fee. From there, we could see the Old City gate, so we also wandered through that. It was mostly small restaurants and cafes, but you could really see it as the shopping district back in ye olden times.
- For lunch, we stopped at a chain from Amsterdam called Fries Fabrique. Their potatoes are fresh and twice fried.
- A store nearby had a sale one some bags, so I got a new purse.
- We took a different route back to our hotel and added a donut stop for him.
- For the rest of the afternoon, we did more “work” (like booking train tickets) and some lazing about.
- We popped around the corner to a Thai place for dinner. Our food was pretty good, but we were leaving in the nick of time as a large tour group came in.
- On the way back around the corner, we noticed a “store” of vending machines. It’s a tiny bit Japanese influenced in that they have a wide variety not only of snacks and drinks, but also of vapes, batteries to charge phones, etc..
- Back at the hotel, we checked out the rooftop terrace. The views are okay, but the other parts of the roof are gardens.
- Later, I couldn’t fall sleep….it took two movies.
