Germany!

Thursday: So, I usually don't include travel in this blog but this time it was pretty entertaining.  I traveled with two of my very good friends Sammy and Natalie who made this day a bearable and fun adventure. We set out at 8:10 on the shuttle into town.  We stayed in Grantham for about an hour before going to the train station from which we took an hour-long train into King's Cross in London.  Then, we got on the London Underground and went all the way across town to Heathrow which took about an hour.  From there we boarded our first flight into Vienna.  We got off the airplane in the middle of a parking lot and got on a bus which took us to the airport.  If you are not counting yet, that is already 5 forms of transportation. After spending a couple of hours in the Vienna airport, we boarded our plane to Munich. We again took a bus from the plane to the airport, found the subway station in the airport and became overwhelmingly overwhelmed by the fact that everything was in German.  None of us spoke a lick of German.  We had already taken 7 forms of transportation and we had to get to our hostel in Augsburg which is an hour away from the city but we couldn't find anyway to get to Augsburg using what we thought was the train system.  We asked around and found out we were in the subway station and had to go to the Main station to switch from subway to train.  We made friends with a group of Norwegian men on the subway which was highly entertaining in my exhausted state.  We got off the subway, and headed for our train.  The moment the train doors opened, I was overwhelmed by the smell of beer and the amount of people.  We smooshed into the crowed and we were pushed into the aisle smooshed up to a table with a German family from Augsburg sitting at it.  There was one girl who looked about our age and spoke english pretty well, her father and her father's two brothers.  They were drunk and hilarious and they helped us figure out everything we needed to know about the Munich train system.  An hour later, we got off the train and took a taxi to our hostel.  16 hours and 10 forms of transportation after leaving Harlaxton, I needed a bed.

Friday, we woke up, ate a free breakfast, found the rest of the travel group consisting of me, Nata, Sammy, Rachel, my good friend Rosa (It was her birthday that day!), My friend Mary Lana and Rosa's friend from home, Ally and we headed to Munich.  Again, the train was packed with men in Lederhosen and women in Drendels who were already drunk.  We got off the train and followed the herds of lederhosen onto the subway and followed the lederhosen again up the escalator.  The moment I stepped off the escalator, I was stunned by the amount of people, the culture, the rides and the amount of fun I could tell I was going to have already.  We looked in a couple of "tents" to see if we had made it early enough to grab a seat inside.  No such luck.  We went out into the beer garden and ordered some beer.  In Germany, they give it to you in Liters which is more beer than anyone needs in one sitting, but we all finished our beers before going out on the street! We walked along the streets of the festival buying steins, hats, presents for our families, pretzels, bratwurst and candied apples for hours.  We stopped in another beer garden, split a couple more Liters and sang ein prosit for a little longer.  The whole day feels like a blur of beer, lederhosen, pretzels, carnival rides and song.  Then when we grew tired of the festival, we ventured out into the rest of Munich.  We saw a beautiful cathedral, some monuments and did a little window shopping.  However, the city of Munich was deserted due to the festival and we were all feeling the effects of our beer wearing off so we decided to catch a train back to Augsburg, get some dinner and go back to our respective hostels.  Natalie, Sammy and I played cards in our hostel room before hitting the hay relatively early.


Saturday, we decided to stay in Augsburg and explore a little as opposed to going back into Munich.  We hit a couple of antique shops, an Oktoberfest for children, did some more window shopping and soaked in some small town Germany.

Then, we found Bertolt Brecht's old house despite my mixed feelings for Mother Courage and Her Children.  We also went into the most beautiful Cathedral I've seen yet.  Overall, I loved Augsburg but as the day turned into night we grabbed some pizza and ice cream and went back to the bed and breakfast for a catnap.  Sammy, Nata and I woke up around 11pm to catch the train into Munich.  We went to the airport, found some cafe benches and went to sleep before our 7am flight.


Sunday, we were awaken by a pissed off cafe worker saying "hallo" and tapping her foot at 4am.  We went through security, got some coffee and went to our gate where I got about another hour of sleep.  We boarded our flight, stopped off in Geneva and before I knew it we were back in the Refectory eating Roast chicken and potatoes.


Coming up next: Field trips to Nottingham and Castle time!