Beer Heaven

Group of Wisco kids on Saturday Morning at the Hacker Tent

 I honestly don't even know where to begin. This was the most ridiculous weekend of my life, hands down. It was a ton of fun too. If you have the means or opportunity to go to Oktoberfest, in Munich, take it. A group of about 15 of us from the villa left on a coach bus to go to Oktoberfest at 11:30 PM on Thursday, and we arrived at about 9:30 AM. The ride there was pretty cool just because we drove through the Bavarian and Italian Alps. We could see all the little houses and cities lit up at night, which was sweet. However, I didn't sleep for more than probably a half hour tops. So that blew. Then, we arrived at the campsite we were staying it. It was pretty legit. The tents they gave us kept us dry, and they fed us breakfast every morning. Also, there was basically free brew on site as well. It honestly reminded me of camping in Wisconsin or Minnesota. Germany = the midwest is what I learned from this trip. So there's the description of the campsite. So we left for Oktoberfest at about noon on Friday, and the first tent we went to was the Paulner tent. Here is a picture of the Paulner tent

This picture doesn't really do the place justice. It was gigantic, and so many people were geared up in their Bavarian outfits and Lederhosen. It was awesome just being a part of that atmosphere. Everyone was so happy to be there, and just looking to have a good time. The way the place was decorated was awesome. The outside of Oktoberfest wasn't anything special, just a long street with food vendors and the outsides of the tents, which looked just like normal buildings. There were also a ton of beer gardens on the outside of the main tents as well. But the insides were phenominal. Just tables everywhere, bands playing German tunes, people singing and dancing, cheering and what not. It was unbelivable. And the Beer.... good lord was the beer amazing. It might have been brewed by the Gods themselves. Easily the best tasting beer I have ever had in my life. I think I said on numerous occasions while enjoying it that I was the happiest man alive. Here is a photo of the fantastic brew. I honestly can't describe to you how good it was. Here's another photo of some of us at the first tent

Amazing

So that was basically day number one, the only day with nice weather. I was dead tired from the drive up there / spending the day at Oktoberfest, that I went to bed at 7 PM that night. I slept through a whole mess of rain and a hail storm which was nice, thank goodness for those sturdy tents. So the next day we all woke up at 6:30 in order to get into a tent in Munich. Apparently the tents fill up very quickly on Saturday's, and they don't let people in after a certain amount of time. We get into the Hacker tent, shown above, at about 7:30 AM and the place was PACKED already. It was easily the best part of Oktoberfest though. Everyone started chanting for beer and it was served at around 9 AM. Highlights of the Hacker tent to speed this whole post up. It was definitely the best tent we went into.

Me and a buddy with one of the Beer Maidens

1) Being the only Americans in the tent, no joke
2) Cheering and singing songs with the Germans around us
3) Singing Varsity with the Wisco kids
4) The gigantic pretzels
5) The beer maidens. They could carry an unbelievable amount of beer at one time, and always seemed to show up at your table at just the right moment
6) The whole atmosphere. Everyone was dressed up and chanting, cheering, having a blast, etc.
7) My pretzel stash, nibblinz just like back at home
8) PROST!!!

We got kicked out of that tent though at 12:30 because it was reserved. A lot of the tents were like that, so me and a couple buddies wandered around for a while trying to find A) some place to sit and hang out and B) some place to get a rotisserie chicken. That was easily the best chicken I've ever had and we were honestly on a quest searching for hours to find a place that had room for us to sit down and order one. We finally came to this outside beer garden and sat at a table with these Australian girls. There was also some Englishmen and Americans at tables near us too. So we all just kind of talked and played different kinds of drinking games, which was a lot of fun. One of the best parts of Oktoberfest was just meeting different people from different countries and hanging out with them. It was pretty neat. 

So that was pretty much Saturday. At this point I have no more pictures because I gave my camera to a member of our program for safe keeping. A great choice. Anyways, we got up on Sunday and decided to go to the concentration camp at Dachau. This was a complete 180 from Oktoberfest, but I'm so glad that we did it. It was crazy that such a place existed basically right in the midst of a city / near such a large city as Munich and that hardly anyone knew what was going on. Dachau was one of the first camps, and imprisoned over 500,000 people. More than 40,000 died there. It was an extremely chilling and sobering experience to go there, to see the barracks, the prisoner's quarters, the grounds, the fences, as well as the crematorium and the gas chambers. It really made you think a lot about how the hell something like that could have ever even happened. I think it was a really good thing to get a chance to see though. It really makes the whole holocaust deal that much more real, actually seeing and walking on the place where thousands of people were murdered. If you get the chance, I definitely think you should go visit one at some point in your lifetime. But after Dachau we all went home, got on the bus, drove through the Alps which was beyond beautiful, saw all these little mountain towns on the way, and finally got home.

It was quite the weekend

The Whole Crew