Prost Oktoberfest!

So after spending a couple of nights in Milan we were ready to get out of there and head to Munich for Oktoberfest. Milan is kind of a dump. As far as Brooke and I could tell there is one area that’s very nice (where we saw the models). Other than that, the city is more/less covered in trash and graffiti. Anyway, at least part of the rational for coming to Milan in the first place was so that we could ride the train through the Alps on our way to Munich. So, we spent the better part of the day on Sunday doing exactly that. The train ride was 7 hours long but it didn’t seem long at all. The train went north, through Austria. Much of what we saw was exactly what you imagine when you think of the Alps and Bavaria.

We took it easy that night once we got to the hotel so we could get up at a reasonable time to get to the beer tents at Oktoberfest. When I was here two years ago I got to the beer tents too late and couldn’t get in. Not that it would be the end of the world. Outside of the beer tents most places have beer gardens. So even if we couldn’t have gotten inside it would have been fine. We ended up getting to Oktoberfest around noon on Monday. We had no problem getting in (we even brought Flat Stanley)! We went to several of the tents before sitting down at the Paulaner tent. Beers were about 9 euros which is close to 13 dollars. They come in 1 liter glasses. It was reasonably low key. The music started playing around 12:30 or so. With the exception of a few guys that had clearly been there for a while most people kept their seats. We were there for a few hours. I think we took off after round 3. We headed back to the hotel and went to bed very early.

We got up the next day and spent some time on the web trying to figure out where to stay in Salzburg. Originally, we weren’t going to go back to Oktoberfest. But we just couldn’t stay away. I’m glad that we did end up going back. We didn’t get there until around 9:30 that night so we went to the first tent that we came to. Everyone in the house (probably a couple thousand people) was standing on benches and tables singing along with the band. We met some entertaining German folks (see pics) who were sitting at our table.  The one on the far right calls himself 'King Kong'.  We got a big kick out of that!  The tent closed at 11pm so we were only there for about an hour and a half. We stopped at a bar on the way home and spent an hour or so discussing politics with the bartender there before heading home.  Fun times!

We caught the train to Salzburg the next day at around noon. I probably could have stayed for another day or two but Munich is an expensive city to stay in during Oktoberfest and we have a lot of other places that we’d like to see. It took about 2 hours to get to Salzburg. It is an amazingly beautiful city. Originally we were going to stay here for 3 nights but I think we’ll probably extend that for a couple more days before we head to Vienna.

Things we’ve learned:

- Milan is gross
- You can get into the beer tents at Oktoberfest for free as long as you go during the week
- Germany and Austria sell a lot of bottled water that is the fizzy, bubbly kind we don't like
- The food in Germany is very good! We had one of our best meals yet in Munich.
-The Alps are as beautiful and you would imagine.