The one you've all been waiting for!

Okay, the promised post is finally here! This is the other half of the story:

So I got on the plane in Toronto. It was a British Airways flight to London, England and then I was supposed to catch a connector flight to Munich. Here is what I have to say about that flight: If you are the sort of person who has unusually strong foot odor, you shouldn’t take off your shoes at any point in public; and, yes, an airplane is “public.” I don’t really care if they are uncomfortable; you are not at home in your armchair and you shouldn’t act like you are. Gross… gross. The good part about the flight was that BA international flights have private TV screens for each passenger. That was cool because I could watch what I wanted, which ended up being “Bewitched.” Another good thing was that I made friends with the stewardess (I refuse to use the term flight attendant). It kind of restored my faith that if you are nice to people, they will be nice to you, which was shaken in the Edmonton/Toronto airports. At the end of the flight I shook her hand and thanked her for her hard work and she said that I made the flight bearable (there were some real boors sitting around me), and it made me feel good that I could make someone else feel good. The other bad thing about the flight, though (aside from the smelliness), was that I fell asleep within the first half hour, but then they served dinner and before I knew it I was wide awake. Then I had a really hard time sleeping at all.

The flight ran a little late and I had about 50 minutes to make it out of the plane, onto a bus, into a different terminal, through customs and to my gate (those were all different prepositions, did you notice?). I rushed and raced and when I got where I was supposed to go, and was all sweaty and gross, the flight had been postponed for an hour. The other nice thing about BA is that they give you a little travel pack that has a little toothbrush and paste, a sleeping mask and a pair of socks. Now that is thinking! So I changed my socks and tried to find an unsecured server so that I could check my email and get Nicole’s cell phone number so that I could let her know that I was running late. I wasn't able to find one, by the way.

The connector flight to Munich was really uneventful, it’s like the flight from Edmonton to Calgary, but I didn’t have any people sitting next to me at all. All 3 seats belonged to me. It was nice. So I get off the plane and collect my baggage. I pass through customs and, in addition to giving them my passport, I handed the man my letter of acceptance to the LMU because we were told over and over again by the study abroad centre that we would need to show it. The guy looked so confused by this letter that it was funny; I almost laughed out loud. Then I passed through the doors and Nicole and her cousin (I actually think he’s her second cousin. He’s her mom’s cousin, so that’s second cousin, right?) were waiting there for me and I felt happy in the pit of my stomach. Then I realized that it was just that I really, REALLY wanted a donair.

Manfred drove us back to his house, which is just outside of Munich, and we met his wife Helga and his oldest son Marcus. We unloaded the bags and then I think that we pretty much had dinner then. I should also mention that the weather was crap that day. It was raining, but not very hard, just kind of constantly spitting, and it was so humid that, even though it was cool, I was sweating, and I had straightened my hair for the flight because curly hair doesn’t travel well (it turns into a dreadlock) and so the hair was slowly turning into a fuzzball. It looked kind of like I was touching one of those electrostatic balls and my hair was standing on end. We sat around and chatted for a while and talked about what to do. It was now about 4:00 in Germany, which is 8:00 in the morning in Canada and that meant that I had been awake for 28hours already. So I said that we had to leave because if I sat around I would be tired and would want to sleep and if I slept that I would keep sleeping, and that I really wanted to go to Oktoberfest. So we left to go to Oktoberfest, and I fell asleep in the car. It was okay, though, because it was just a little nap. Manfred and Helga dropped us off and we agreed to meet at 8:00 back at the drop off. They didn’t want to come because they say they are too old and it’s not really their thing.

So Nicole and I followed the people and made it to Oktoberfest. I should also mention, for anyone who hadn’t heard yet, that it was imperative that we go to Oktoberfest, even though I was ridiculously tired, because this was the last night. So here is my Oktoberfest experience: Oktoberfest is a fancy way of saying “Klondike Days.” I am sorry to shatter any illusions you may have had, but if my illusions were shattered then yours should be too. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. Basically there is a main thoroughfare at the end of which there is a small midway (compared to K-days’ standards) and then a secondary thoroughfare that runs parallel to the main one. These are lined with little shops, much like K-days, but I discovered that there are really only five or six shops and they are repeated over and over again. It was basically: a shop to buy beer steins, one for shirts and hats, one for sausages of all kinds (cooked and ready to eat), one for baked almonds, one for fish,and one for these big, crazy gingerbread hearts with stuff written on them. The main difference lies in the fact that behind these shops on the main thoroughfare are the beer halls, and that it a little bit more of what I was expecting when I think of Oktoberfest. Inside these halls there are hundreds of people (thousands?) and they are all drinking and singing. There was a brass oompah band in the middle playing typical german folk songs and there were beer maids bringing about a dozen steins at a time. Nicole and I tried to go to the Augustiner beer hall on the recommendation of Marcus, but it was so full that there was actually a sign that said “sorry you can’t come in” on the door. There were actually two Augustiner halls and they were both too busy to enter. We ended up going to the Paulaner hall, but it was really busy, too. I would have liked to have seen the inside of the Augustiner halls if they were too busy, because Paulaner was ridiculous. Nicole and I ended up actually sitting outside under an awning because we couldn’t find a place to sit inside. We drank a steinful each and then headed off to meet Manfred and Helga. (I am actually finishing off the last little bit of beer here, but you can't really see it. I just kind of looks like an empty beer stein. Too bad.) We picked up a sausage along the way. Then we drove back to Ebersburg (where they live), had a cup of tea and then I headed off to bed at about 9:30-10:00. I was up for about 34hours straight. By the end of it, I thought I was a humming bird.