Here's the last picture of the parade I was trying to upload. I had just ran out of room :/

So Oktoberfest!

Our adventures started after the parade, when we were sitting on the lawn behind the Rathaus (City Hall) and I was eating a giant pretzel twice the size of my head.

We decided to meet the International Club people at Odeonsplatz, where they said they would be to take us to Oktoberfest but when we showed up no one was around. Instead we totally BY ACCIDENT ended up roaming into the Theatine Church:

 After that we made our way to Oktoberfest :)) The whole thing is massive. The amount of people, the food, the beer, the "tents", and the rides. By "tents" they mean fully constructed buildings with tent-like roofs and I expected all the rides to be of the super-cheap, mega-sketchy carnival variety, but none of those were found. They had legit roller coasters and a few almost Disney quality storybook rides (I'm assuming, we didn't actually pay 10 euros to go on one). Here's the inside of a tent we actually got a table at:

We were in that tent at 3 p.m. so it was a little more mellow, if you're there later literally everyone is standing on the tables singing along with the songs and having a jolly good time. Here is the madness outside the tents:

and one of the tents we tried to find a table at with no luck:

Such an atmosphere though, it's a bit insane. Round two is tomorrow! Wish us luck!

The past few days have been crazy! Going, going, and going. First there was an Exchange "Meeting" in a bar (see what they did there?) of our student housing complex, the Studentenstadt, which they refer to as StuSta in all our paperwork haha. There are actually three, all in separate buildings. This one happens to be on the roof of the tallest. The view:

I'm not really sure what that Ferris wheel is for, it is not for Oktoberfest if that's what you were thinking :)

On Friday the girl across the hall and I went to Marienplatz (the City Center) to buy dirndls! That's the traditional dress thing. I don't have a picture of that yet, but the next time we go to Oktoberfest I'll be sure to take one :) That evening they had a Pre-Oktoberfest party in one of the basement bars. We each had a mass (stein) of beer and it was SO HEAVY! I was holding it with both hands the whole time, until we went outside to find a table that is. I think you have to be raised on pretzels and bratwurst to be able to hold one of those for long periods of time without your hand cramping. Case in point, a waiter man in one of the tents at Oktoberfest was carrying LITERALLY eight (!) in EACH HAND, but I'm getting ahead of myself. That's not till Sunday.

Saturday we took a day trip with the International Club to Ulm, a cute little city about two hours (by train) west of Munich, which is home to the tallest church steeple in the world and the birthplace of Albert Einstein. The first thing we went to was this memorial(?) for Albert Einstein:

It's at the site of his old house, which sadly was torn down. I don't think they knew about him when it was torn down, but they certainly do now! He only lived in Ulm for 15 months, then he (his family) moved to Munich, but that's not the important part according to the people who live there. The I-club guy that was telling us all this had just finished saying how proud the people were that Albert Einstein was born in Ulm and was saying "...even though he only lived here for 15 months." Immediately behind him a lady turned around from walking by us and said "But he was born here! That's the important part." HAHAHA. so great.

Here's the inscription:

Something kind of equivalent to "Here was the house where Albert Einstein came into the world on March 14, 1879."

From here we walked down the main street to the church. It was PACKED due to the Saturday morning market and a street performer playing the Adam's Family theme on an accordion :) I took a picture of these random shops because they reminded me a little of the Painted Ladies.

On the other side of that roundish white building was the church:

We climbed to the VERYYY top of that. A total of 768 glorious steps that went in a very small spiral the whole way up. We all thoroughly enjoyed it and didn't complain at all...NOT. This is the back side of the steeple from about half way up:

and the side:

then here's me at what we thought was the top:

but SURPRISE! There's another even smaller spiral staircase that goes up that middle column:

yeahhh. It was very nice though you could walk around the whole top of it. Sadly my camera was too low on battery to take any more pictures :'(

After all that stair climbing we had a nice Bavarian meal to re-clog our arteries :)) I had some German raviolis, which they topped with chunks of bacon and fried strips of onion. YUMMM. Then we just moseyed around the city and walked along the River Danube and it was actually sunny! Yay!

There were also these sparrow statue things EVERYWHERE, all painted in different patterns. The legend is when building the Cathedral they were moving a giant wooden pillar into the city, but it wouldn't fit through the city gates, so they were about to tear them down when someone spotted a sparrow fitting a twig into its nest lengthwise (novel idea). Inspiration struck and their city gates were spar(row)ed from destruction. Haaa! Now there are artistic sparrows all over the place as statues, hanging in front of shops, with top hats, you name it. Bless their hearts.

Sunday morning we went again to Marienplatz to watch the Oktoberfest parade, came up out of the subway on the wrong side, were totally lost, and were actually only one block away from where we thought haha. The parade was full of lederhosen, dirndls, floats made of beer kegs, and German cars (of course). This float was my personal favorite:

That is indeed a whole taxodermied (sp...?) deer and a real falcon on a guy's arm. Immediately after that one was a cannon with a chicken hanging out of it :)

Some lederhosen clad, whip-cracking gentlemen and a horse that made a mess of things:

For some reason it won't let me upload the photo, but there was also a float that had people beating a pile of hay with some really large wooden sticks. Props to them, I could barely even stand for two hours straight let alone do constant manual labor on a moving float with people watching me. That's all for the parade!

Hello all!

I've been in Munich for five days now (it feels more like ages!) so I have lots to tell you, but first things first! Here's a little look into my arrival:

This was the bathroom stall I immediately visited after my 12 hour flight from SF to Munich, and every bathroom has been the same since. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with the toilet brush, but they all have them! I took this picture with my phone and didn't realize the sound was on, so it made a shutter noise when I took it...awkwaaard. There were also these scrolling hand towel dispensers, but I wasn't brave enough to look like a total noob and take a photo of those :/

My room:

The outlet adapter works like a charm :) thank you Katie!

and of course can't forget the bathroom:

The very same kind of bathroom I had been making fun of in Ikea right before going to the airport for my flight, karmaaa. It's not bad though, I've only hit my knee on the sink while showering once so far :) Side note, the toilets don't really FLUSH. There's no swirly action. It just starts with very little water and then kinda dumps a bunch of water in there and floods to push everything down and out.

Down the hall is our shared kitchen/dining/lounge area with these gorgeous views:

That random tower is the Olympiaturm in Olympiapark, built for the Summer Olympics which they had here in 1972, not the 80's like I thought haha. I haven't been out there yet, but hopefully sometime soon! Also those other tall buildings are probably the tallest in Munich, they don't really have "skyscrapers" here. AAAND contrary to what you "green" people might think, the grass on the roofs of the low buildings is totally accidental. It's just because they have rocks on the top that the plants can then grow from.

Things I have immediately noticed as different:

This section is for you Meag!

1. Obviously, the bathrooms. 'nuff said.
2. They refer to fizzy/carbonated water as "water with gas." THAT one caught me off guard. No ma'am, I do not want my water with gas :) danke schoen.
3. Everyone and their MOTHER drives a BMW, Audi, Mercedes, or Volkswagen (pronounced folksVAgen) and it's either a really box-y European style van, a sedan, or a hatchback.
4. All the doors (on my hall at least) aren't made so that the door closes flush with the door jam, it's more like fitting two tetris "L" pieces together, so I think my door is open constantly even though it's fully closed.
5. They write their ones differently. They look like little teepees, instead of lines.
6. Speaking of lines, I haven't found anything that could be referred to as a street "block"; their streets go any way they please and curve whenever they feel like it.
7. When getting on/off any public transportation (trains, trams, buses) you have to open the door yourself. The older ones have handles, new ones have buttons.
8. There's a pretzel stand/bakery window in every major subway station.
9. The two restaurants I've been in both had long, rectangular tables all put together, made of black stained wood, and lots of coat racks along the walls/on the pillars.

OH and mixing coke (or other cola) and orange soda is a huge thing. It's called spezi (pronounced shpetzi) and it's delicious :)

That's all folks!

P.S. "Prost, alter" means "Cheers, dude" NOT "Cheers, old" as Google Translate will tell you. It's the first phrase my German flatmates taught me, but then they're from Northern Germany so they might just be messing with me. It does also mean old in other parts of Germany, apparently.