Heavens me, where do I begin? Oh ja! BEEEEER!  Munich was definitely an unforgettable trip.  We arrived at the Munich train station at about 9 PM.   As soon as we got off the train, we were greeted by a parade of heavy drinkers in their Lederhosen, stumbling and swaying back and forth – we knew we were in the right place!  The metro station was also littered with drunks.  It was not abnormal to see a man on a bench trying to keep his eyes open while his head bobs up and down.  Just keep your distance if you know what I mean.

We quickly figured out how to get a metro ticket and made our way to the K+K Hotel for our first night.  Since we don’t have a printer I had taken a few screenshot of the map of where the hotel was.  I thought I had the right place… oops.  We ended up wandering in the dark in the opposite direction for about 45 minutes until we realized that the hotel was no where to be found.  We quickly made our way back to the metro station that we got off at and we saw the K+K Hotel on the other side of street.  Phew!  The hotel was comfortable and they even had wireless internet!… Oh sorry, there was fine print… The wireless internet was only available in the lobby. BAH!  It ended up being ok though cause we had wired internet in our room – who knows what we would have done had we not been able to check Facebook status’ that night!

We woke up the next morning and had a nice 36 Euro ($55 Canadian) breakfast – you can imagine that we did not leave any room in our stomachs if we were paying that much for breakfast. We checked out and went to find our other next hotel (yes we did a bit of hotel hopping).  We took the metro and within 20 minutes we were at our metro stop for the hotel.  Just like the first hotel search went, I got us into the same little mess.  Within the first 10 minutes we figured we weren’t on the right track, so I took out my baby (the laptop) and looked at the directions – yep, wrong way!  My bad.  Our hotel was ridiculously hard to find even after we found the parking lot for it, how embarrassing.  We checked in and all was well, time to head to Oktoberfest!

We took the metro and arrived to Oktoberfest at around 12 noon.  It’s as if we arrived at a party that started weeks ago… well, technically it did.  Oktoberfest from a distance looked like what we would call an “Exhibition”.  It had rides, food and beer!  For folks who attended the mighty Craven Country Jamboree, Oktoberfest makes Craven look like a child’s birthday party.  We made our way to a beer tent and quickly got in.  We went to look for a place to sit and of course all the benches were full.  We hovered around until we saw a couple get up – time to move in.  We sat down and the people we were sitting with were all German and didn’t speak a word of English – it’s ok though, because everyone speaks the universal language of “Smile and Drink”.  When you get through your first liter of beer, you normally have to go pee.  We got in line for the bathroom and miraculously, the guys line was WAY longer than the girls.

I met a guy from Australia while we were in line for the bathroom, he invited us to come join him and his mates at his table.  We joined them and had a few rounds.  We also met a couple from Nelson, BC who were living in Munich.  Part way through the beer fest we noticed that there was a lot of commotion by the bathroom.  We looked and saw a middle aged lady trying to sneak out 2 full beer mugs.  She was quickly grabbed by security – the funny thing is, she wrestled with him as he tried to stop her and pry the mugs out of her hand.  Beer was splashing everywhere!  After they took the beer from her her and the security guard duked it out in a good ol’ fashion mercy fight.  The video is below.

After drinks with our Aussi friends we decided to bid them farewell.  We walked around for a bit and I eventually convinced Andrée to go on this giant swing ride.  It probably wasn’t the best idea when you’ve already had 3 liters of beer.  We both felt a little dizzy and sick after it.

Around supper time we headed back to our hotel where we hung out in the lobby and had some beers with some friendly Germans.  One of them could speak a little bit of English and the other one couldn’t speak a word of it.  His friend had to translate almost every few sentences for him.  It made us wish that we could speak German and I’m sure he wished he spoke English.

The next day was a little more somber, quite the opposite of the night before.  We woke up early to go on a tour of the Dachau concentration camp.   It was a 5 hour tour and our tour guide gave us quite an interesting history lesson followed by an emotional walk through of the buildings and court yards where such horrible things took place.  We all know know the just of what happened in concentration camps, people were starved and tortured.  But what most don’t know are the ways the prisoners were tortured and the average day of a prisoner.  Our tour guide described incredibly graphic scenarios that made your hairs stand on end.  Overall, an incredibly insightful tour and I highly recommend it.

We also went to Venice, Italy right after Munich so maybe when my fingers are less tired I’ll write a post on that.