Bevo Bevo Bevo, Bevi! (October Fest!)

Bevo Bevo Bevo
Quando Bevo Bevo
Mi Ubriaco E Son Felice
Anke Se Poi Vomito!!!

 This weekend was absolutely ludicrous. We arrived in Munich with almost no sleep, having train hopped from 4pm Friday until 7am Saturday over 5 or 6 trains, but were ready to drink. I mean how often are you in Germany for Octoberfest?!?
Some of you may have noticed the song at the top of this blog is most definitely not English or German but Italian. I learned the drinking song from our newly made Italian friends behind me.

I sort of jumped into the middle of this story so lets rewind a little. As of the Thursday before leaving my plans for the weekend included a school sponsored "get to know everyone" pot luck party. Some point during Friday myself and Andrew Moakes spoke with some of the Brazilian kids attending the summer school and decided with half an hour we were going to go the way did, hence the train hopping. Some of the saner people reading this may wonder why we would ever hop on an opportunity so horrid as training hopping all night with little to no sleep and my answer is simply money. Our round trip costs, 30 Euro per person. 5 hour train one way straight through to Munich cost, 160+ Euro per person.

So now you know the beginning of our journey lets meet the riff raff!

From this corner, we have the Americans!

(She's technically Swiss but she can be an honary American for this trip)
This girl is extremely quiet but smiles and giggles almost seemingly at random and is much more talkative with people who know Italian.

She was a source of confusion when Neil told me Laura was coming, having not known it was her name I thought we had invited her as well as another Laura and didn't have enough tickets. It didn't help my brain at all when both Laura's walked up the stairs at the train station.

We all made it where we needed to go so obviously it worked out, hey oh!

Mr Andrew Moakes, pronounced as Moh ack ies by those trying to irritate him. He's been hopping around Europe a while before us but has been playing catch up in Germany.

 
It's me! And I'm actually much more excited then I appear, I'm just annoyed cause I'd been trying to get a clear picture from a window reflection on a moving train with poor lighting. Figures the only decent picture I'm chewing on my damn lip.

Look at this fella here! Snoozin away like a lil baby. This is one of my close friends Neil Mccaffery and as many pictures as I seem to have of him sleeping it makes sense since he didn't sleep when we got back from this trip like the rest of us did. Instead he went to a crazy Drum and Bass festival in Bremen. Only live once, right?










So these were the kids we were rolling with, but the heroes, (and heroins) of the day were our Brazillian friends. Without them we would never of thought about using regional trains in such an obnoxiously time consuming way to reduce our costs so drastically.

 Though one of the ladies had ducked out for a snooze during this picture this is the bulk of or Brazilian companions.I'd name each but I'm honestly not sure how to spell all of their names, and am pretty sure I was mispronouncing at least two of their names.





Introductions past, but stories to come!

Please tell me you didn't think I'd end a blog with an introduction, I'm hardly that boring. Well, I hope I'm not at least. I'll try to keep this short though, since this is already turning into quite a monster of a post.

On the way there on our last trains I landed with two of the Brazilians while they were getting ready for breakfast. I found it well balanced. There was wheat, eggs, flour, vitamin B... who am I kidding. We were eating cake, drinking beer, and shooting energy drink. I'm glad it's not just an American thing lol.

And check out that product placement!











Now once we got to Octoberfest I took countless pictures, which will no doubt make it to my facebook in the near future, but the one moment that made me ecstatic but super disappointed it was missed was when I stood on a table, as many had before me, and chugged the one liter beer I had bought. The difference between me and everyone else was that I drank the beer so fast that the Italians next to us started a "USA" chant as I finished and sat down. If nothing else that made the trip worth it, though I only bought two more steins of beer, being at this point very full and on my way to being drunk.

The problems of the trip began when Germans came over to our table with full glasses as we near the end of our third and decided that they would drink with us, but first had to fill our cups to an equal height as theirs. All said and done I may have only bought 3 steins but we each drank at least 5 steins of beer. Mixed with the heat this made for an unpleasant exiting into a shadeless, but absolutely awesome fair ground. The fair ground had a roller coaster nearly as big as the super man coaster at six flags back home, not that I had the initiative or mental dexterity to ride it anymore.

German Friends!   

After a quick pit stop for an upset stomach the day went uphill for a long time until around 9pm, when our bodies started to realized how hard we had duped them and that we had in fact NOT slept. This was when we started lounging around random city spots like touristy American squatters. It is also when I saw some of my favorite sites. First there was  a "street performer" who gave the appearance of being headless, he was by far the least interesting but one of the first I noticed.

After the headless man I noticed real performers, such as a classical ensamble which included instruments such as a Chello and a Piano and a violinist.

There was also a group of rastafari playing a very strange assortment of instruments but putting together some very catchy songs.

And pictured below is a blurry photo of a violin trio who was extremely talented and apparently not playing for money, though I couldn't tell the purpose I found it very nice music and rather relaxing.

 

 I was just getting ready to publish this when I realized I forgot my two favorite street performers! First came the fire eater, who blew fire about like he was Spyro back in the 90's when PlayStation was still where it was at. And then, right after, as if to qualify description of the fire eater as a dragon a man in a black cloak with lantern and Halberd came running through the streets. I unfourtunately could not catch either in a photo. But the memory will last.

And as with many great tales there is the tragedy, for without it the happiness would not be so sweet. On the way back the combination of hangover (I was completely sober by the time we left at 5am Sunday morning), exhaustion, dehydration and hangover induced motion sickness I had a horrid time getting back to Weststadt. I got very sick throughout the trip, and couldn't hold water down for the longest time which made everything else even more miserable.
Despite this, I did get back, finally got liquids back into my system and slept for nearly 24 hours and feel good as new now (I even went to class on time!). Lesson learned though, drink more water before I leave. Especially on nearly 12 hours of train rides which could make me motion sick.

On that note I think I'll leave a picture of our last train station stop on the way back (which I felt great at by the way, turns out train stations don't shake about and such) of the other Americans passed out, asleep for one of our infrequent 30 minute naps.

If you're still reading, I have to say I find the commendable. I hope you enjoyed my trip.

Oh yeah, the italian song. Roughly translated means, drink drink drink, something drink drink. Having fun, even if they puke. Silly Italians singing at German beer festivals...