Oktoberfest!!!

On Friday night I got on a tour bus with a couple hundred other Erasmus students and shoved off to Munich for Oktoberfest. It took about eight hours to get there and when we arrived there was no time to waste. We got in line to get a table and the drinking commenced at 9am! The steins contain a liter of beer and after a couple of liters our group grew to contain some local Germans. "Prost!" Everyone would cheer as we gulped down another liter of beer. Only one problem with drinking liters of beer...gotta go to the bathroom a lot (everyone did) it was like fighting to get a picture of Lady Gaga trying to enter into those four walls. On the way back the delicious scent of bratwurst and sausages lingered in the air. I may have eaten the best hamburger of my life, dressed with grilled onions and so delectable...a bag of warm mixed candied nuts finished it right off for dessert. Oktoberfest wasn't just beer houses. There was also carnival rides, games, and spectacles of watching really drunk men and women walk around in their traditional German dress. One of the fellow students tried to win me a Hello Kitty through a shooting game with fail...it's hard to shoot a gun straight after 4 liters of beer. When we were supposed to go on a tour of Munich everyone got lost and wandered their separate ways. I found my way back to the house of Lowenbrau after grabbing another bratwurst and some fries--i mean ya gotta eat when you're drinking that much--ha. I thought it would be more difficult to get back into the beer house with all of the security guards standing around it but I was wrong. As I dipped under the chain no one seemed to notice my presence because they were wheeling someone else on a hospital gurney...too much beer? Found some other Erasmus students and decided it was safest to stay inside where there weren't four people bent over puking into one trashcan at the same time or just people generally past out among this festival of thousands. The beer house became livelier at night as everyone was singing and on their 6th or 7th liter of beer. After about 5 or 6 attempts of marriage (drunk Germans and Italians really like Americans--especially from California) back to the bathroom again. By this time the wood outside was unbelievably slippery due to all of the spilt beer and woops! out from under me my boot flew up into the air as i landed flat on my back...good thing i couldn't rly feel it at the time but i'm telling you...took almost 3 weeks for my tailbone to stop hurting! ha ha ohhh well a sacrifice to the beer Gods. As the night dragged on the memory became less and less and I trekked back to the tour bus with another student. Unfortunately I thought I wasn't supposed to be at the bus until 9:30 and surprise surprise everyone else was there at 9. woops...add to that another 15 minutes as I waited for a friend to leave the bathroom and the bus almost left without us 45 minutes late! he he needless to say the ride back to Milan was not nearly as fun as the ride to Munich. Everyone passed out and woke up with some of the worst hangovers in history. Oh well...how often do you go to Oktoberfest? {in Munich anyway;)}