September 26
So we caught the train at 12.40am, with the intention of getting into Munich about 7.20am and heading to a pub called the Ned Kelly to meet Meg and her friends to watch the AFL grand final before heading to Oktoberfest. A great plan, if it had of gone to schedule! Clearly Oktoberfest is a huge festival, and even at 4am when we caught the train from Ulm to Munich, the train was packed and then continued to get even fuller as we stopped at each train station, until finally poor unlucky people at train stations closer to Munich were unable to get on the train because it was soooooo packed! Everyone was dressed up in their finest Lederhosen and the dress the women wear, and they looked pretty amazing! They had also brought some travellers (beer) for the journey! Because the train was so packed and people were still trying to get on, the train ran half an hour late, which means we missed our connecting train to Munich, which by the time we got to Munich, we were about an hour later than what we had planned. So we quickly dumped our bags and headed to the pub. Unfortunately on the way, Meg texted to say they had slept in so weren´t going to make it, but were heading straight to Oktoberfest...not happy Jan! But we headed to the pub anway. OMG, was packed!!!!!!!!! (i think this is what the whole day is going to be like!)...ended up watching the last 10 mins, but could only see like a third of the screen, haha! But managed to get a beer, just after it finished, so that brought me a little bit of serenity!
So off to Oktoberfest...on the train saw a beautiful old man and woman dressed in traditional gear (see the photo), and then we were there...was just amazing and totally indescribable! Was people everywhere, and not only did they have the beer halls, but there were places outside to get beers, and a massive carnival atmosphere with tons of rides and stalls! Was soooo huge! My fav thing of the day was the beer carousel! Spent a few beers sitting on that going round in circles watching people...also went on a couple of rollercoasters...the beer halls were packed and nobody was getting in! We had lunch in a beer hall and was really fun! The usual is half a chicken and a stein! We were so impressed that we were drinking steins (1 litre), that we bought one each as a souvenier! About 4pm we had a little snooze on the hill, like about 500 hundred other people (again see picture)...we ended up deciding to head back into the city to a pub as the place was know starting to smell like vomit and people were so smashed the were falling down and yet still MORE people were filing in!
Once we got back to the city we realised how stuffed we were from no sleep, so caught the 6pm train to Nuremberg, where Alex (from rugby) kindly picked us up and we finally got to have some sleep!
