Another day trip we took with the International Club was to Landsberg am Lech, which is a small town about an hour west of Munich. We also ended up sitting on the floor of this train, haha but at least people weren't constantly walking over us. We weren't sure what the draw to this town was, other than "cute" the I-club guides just said we would be hiking along a river and eating lunch, but since that is our favorite activity we were okay with it :)

The train station in Landsberg consisted of a grand total of one track and we walked almost the entire length of the main city in ten minutes, but it was indeed very cute.

 

There was a wall separating us from this section of the river; however, two of our fellow students thought it would be a good idea to jump off this wall onto the cement below. Yeahhh, it's not quite as dry as it looks. They slipped right onto their bums and walked around with dirty pants for the rest of the day.

  

I don't know if you can tell, but there's a tower in the middle of this photo sticking in between the trees that's a half circle. We were all really confused why they only had half a tower, but it seems like it was built that way.

This lovely river is the one that we "hiked", aka strolled, along for an hour to the restaurant where we had lunch. It was literally the only thing out there along the trail and was called "Teufelsküche", or Devil's Kitchen haha. Their food was amazing though! I had the Käsespätzle, which is basically German mac n cheese, meaning it has fried onions on it haha, but it actually came with salad! I think that's the last time I ate vegetables in a restaurant :) 

 

This was the view out by the restaurant and they're outside the frame of this photo but there was a giant flock of swans across the river from us. That's as close as I've gotten to the massive creatures so far, and I'm a little afraid for when I do. Apparently they're pretty fierce.

This was the view from the bottom of the half tower:

 

We tried to go up the tower stairs, since we saw people up there and the door was open, but apparently that was a special tour. We got half way up and then this lady started yelling at us to go back down, but yay for exercise!

My oh my. I am FINALLY going to wrap up Oktoberfest for you all, even though it ended two weeks ago, there are cute pictures and important details to be shared :))

First, the super cliche ones. The last Friday of Oktoberfest was a bit of a madhouse, but we braved it anyway in hopes of good times and bratwurst (but personally mostly bratwurst)((bratwurst = good times)). Before even making it to a tent, I had to stop and buy one of these guys:

 

These little heart cookies are EVERYWHERE, as I think I've mentioned before, and this was the smallest size you could buy. It says "Ich liebe dich", which means "I love you", and TECHNICALLY someone else is supposed to buy it for you, but I bought it for myself and pretended it was from someone else ;) happy days. According to anyone who is from Munich, you do not eat the "lebkuchen" from Oktoberfest, you just keep it as a memento and buy actual, decent-tasting lebkuchen from a bakery, of which there are no shortage in any part of the city. I however, am not a fan of letting cookies go stale just to throw them away eventually anyway (and part of the icing got crushed as we were stampeding into the Hofbrau tent) so I went for it! and instantly regretted my decision. Well maybe not regretted it, I would have never known right? but these things are definitely better appreciated as a keepsake than a sweet. It was AWFUL. Simply dreadful. In summary, I will never be eating one of those again, nor will I partake in this apparent "decent-tasting" lebkuchen. There's no improving that, haha.

*side note for Schaefers: The whole thing was eerily close to how our gingerbread houses would taste, if we were ever brave (or stupid) enough to eat them. The gingerbread was very similar, except actually chewable (heheee) and the icing was exactly the same! Super hard and gross.

 Now for the best part! Bratwurst:

SOOO GOOD. Like the best hot dog you've ever eaten, plus a little extra just for authenticity and real identifiable meat :) We never ended up all getting into a tent that Friday, but none of us really cared, we got our bratwurst and were happy.

The very last Sunday of Oktoberfest we started early, at noon :) We had no trouble getting into a tent or finding a table and sat down next to a Croatian man and two South African pilots. We were then joined by a newly married couple, who were not only from California but the guy graduated as a biomedical engineer from Cal Poly in 2008! Such a small world. We spent the majority of our day there, standing on the benches and singing along with the band :))

Ein Prosit der Gemuetlichkeit!

This feels like ages ago, but I'm finally going to tell you about my trip to Salzburg! We went on Oct. 3rd (yikes, like two weeks ago) because that is the Day of German Unity (national holiday) and EVERYTHING in the country was going to be closed, much like Sundays. So we just crossed on over the border to Austria! The train was so full that everyone got split up and I ended up sitting on the stairs that led up to 1st class with three other girls from the international program, one from England, one from Finland, and one from Spain, sooo awesome :)) Anyway, because we were sitting on the stairs that led to 1st class people kept insisting on walking up them and I had to keep moving out of the way. My friend Kate however, was lucky enough to keep sitting while the 1st classers did this, but unlucky in the fact that all their butts were right next to her face. This led to a new game of "rate people's butts as they go by", but then a bunch of older men wanted to go up and we axed it pretty quickly, hahaha.

So Salzburg, the first place we went was a garden I don't remember the name of in front of a "castle" that looked very un-castle like by Bavarian standards and was said to be for official "meetings" of the king, but was actually where his mistress lived. Classyyy. It had a lot of unicorns in it.

Or I guess that would be a Pegasus? and some very nice flower designs:

The actual castle is the distant building up on the hill, but on the way there we stopped in the "city center" area to get some foooood. And see this fountain:

Complete with even more unicorns/pegasi(?). They also showed us the smallest house in all of Austria:

Someone does actually live there, only in the top part :/ the bottom floor is a watch maker's shop. Oh speaking of bottom floors! Another observation about Germany, they start the numbering for their floors at zero, so the ground floor of every building is 0, not 1. For THE LONGEST time I was trying to find my window from the outside of the building and I was always thinking that I had accidentally left my window open, when in fact I was looking at the window of the room below me. While I'm on the subject of observations: 

1. Handkerchiefs are apparently still a thing

2. There's always a large cluster of people smoking outside every building, at school or otherwise

3. Trash cans are tiny. They're like the chihuahuas of dogs, or hairless cats.

The ones at Oktoberfest were especially bad, they're just not built to handle the trash of 7 million people haha. Anyway, on to my favorite part of the day! Lunch! Here it is in all it's glory:

That, my friends, is deliciousness served in its true form. Schnitzel :)) Also some sort of creamy onion soup, potatoes, and a hand full of vegetables probably added as an afterthought haha. After this hearty meal they made us walk uphill for an hour to the castle :/ but we got a lovely view out of it:

We didn't actually go in the castle cuz that requires money that we would all rather spend on food, haha. We also walked past Mozart's birthplace, this lovely yellow building:

He was born on the 2nd floor I think? A few of our fellow internationals went into the museum they have in there, but instead we went to get Starbucks and walk around the street, which was a little full.

Things we discovered: 

1. The Starbucks pastry section in Salzburg is full of wondrous things, like donuts.

2. Starbucks itself was fit into what was once probably a courtyard/basement, instead of a free standing building with a drive-thru.

3. McDonald's sells hamburgers on baguette rolls with waffle fries. Whaaat.

4. The city of Salzburg puts Mozart's face and/or name on ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING: chocolate, coffee shops, flower stands, rubber duckies, puppets, ice cream flavors, pretzels, need I go on?

Speaking of Mozart pretzels, I didn't get one, but I did get a close imitation. Directly next to the Mozart pretzel was this chocolate covered woven pastry thing, which ended up having cinnamon sugar inside it! Magic. That is all for Salzburg, I don't think I ate anything else worth mentioning :) haha.

Oh Schloss Neuschwanstein.

I would say my favorite part was the lovely view of the valley below and Alps in the distance, but it was so foggy we couldn't see anything! From the little town the bus drops you off in you're supposed to be able to see two castles. This one:

Castle Hohenschwangau, build by King Ludwig's father, where Ludwig grew up/took the throne. And Neuschwanstein, but it is much grander and on a much higher peak and was covered by mist. We walked about halfway up the road and it finally appeared:

Here's the view from the little tourist shop:

The inside of the castle tour didn't allow pictures, but I got this one before she informed us of that :)

The castle is actually unfinished so we only saw two-ish floors of it, but that is probably for the best, as I find the inside of castles overstimulating and generally unnerving. Just imagine the above picture as the blandest thing you've ever seen, then add five different types of gaudy wall paper in each of the open beige areas, trimmed with gold, enclosing a scene from a Wagner opera. Add some dark stain woodwork just as busy as the wall patterns, a giant chandelier shaped like a crown, take away half the natural lighting (since small arch windows in 5 foot thick stone walls don't tend to let in much light) and viola! You're standing in the Original "Fairy Tale" castle! Personally I like the version at Disneyland much better, but it was quite amazing to see and I will probably be touring some more completely finished castles, so pray for my sanity :))

After the tour we walked out to Marienbrucke (Mary's Bridge) for the best, most famous view of the castle:

hahaha. But I thoroughly enjoyed the view of the waterfall:

and this gentleman's lovely musical talent:

of which I listened to for probably half an hour. All in all a most excellent day :)

Friday was a bit of a food adventure day for me. I went with another girl from Cal Poly that also lives in the Studentenstadt to get lunch at one of the many Bavarian restaurants near Marienplatz. We got lost trying to find a restaurant that ended up being closed and found this lovely little street:

Then picked a new restaurant on the other side of Marienplatz on this street:

Yes, all of the buildings here are 5 stories tall and no, in certain areas of "downtown" I'm still not sure what distinguishes sidewalk from street. It all looks the same and both people and cars travel on it, haha.

For lunch I went with the simple weiner wurstl, which looks like your average hot dog but tastes more like polska kielbasa, a.k.a. delicious, and comes with potato salad (kartoffelsalat).

I also tried the "water with gas", described to me as simple fizzy water, but experienced more as straight awfulness. It's also the same price for water as it is for soda, so I think I'll be sticking to spetzi :) For dinner the girl across the hall and I ventured three train stops down from where we live to a random food stand recommended to her by our German flatmate. The stand only sells doner kebabs, and they're DELICIOUS. Very similar to gyros, except also infused with love and magic. My immediate love for them might have something to do with the withdrawals I am having due to the distinct lack of Mexican food, or anything-wrapped-in-a-tortilla food, but we decided to get them again for lunch tomorrow so we will see if the love saga continues. Redeeming side note: I am totally addicted to giant pretzels :)

I almost forgot the best part! After lunch we ventured in this giant 8 floor store similar to Sears and found the BEST Lego section in any store ever. Here's why:

No wonder Germans are so smart! They have fully functioning Lego engines to play with in department stores! There were moving pistons and everything. Immediately next to this was a two foot Batman statue :))

BMW BMW BMW!

So cool. On Thursday we had a tour of the BMW Welt (World) and production plant :)) I have never seen another car manufacturing plant, so I have nothing to compare it to, but BMW's is crazy awesome. We started the tour where they stamp out the doors, then they took us through the welding of the frame (5,990 spot welds on the 3 series), painting of the frame, building of the engines, attachment of the frame to the chassis, running of electrical wiring (there's a ton of it, like 3 km in each car or something crazy like that), and final assembly with seats and windows. I apologize to my technical writing teacher for that awful list, but hopefully you all made it through without too much of an issue. Pictures weren't allowed during the tour, but I got some sweet pictures inside the Welt :) Also none of us are sure why, but in the walkway leading to the painting "booth" there was a distinct fish smell. If anyone can explain some magical paint/solvent mixture that results in a fishy smell I'll buy you German chocolate :) There's also a museum out there that is separate from the factory tour, so I'll definitely be going to that at some point!

The "Four Cylinders" building, a.k.a. BMW headquarters:

Main entrance to the Welt:

The road inside where people can drive away in their brand new BMWs from the plant:

And me with my weird liking for hatchbacks:

Alrightyyy, I have been severely slacking!

Where did I leave you all? Ah yes, our second day of Oktoberfest was fast approaching :) We decided since it was a Tuesday we could be daring and not show up until 3 p.m. and hope there was still an open table in one of the tents. The girls I went with all live in a separate housing community on the other side of Oktoberfest, so I made a plan to meet them there at 3. Unfortunately for me my phone decided to "run out of minutes" even though I had only sent like 5 texts at this point, so when one of them texted me and asked if I would meet them at the main entrance (still not really sure which one that is) I couldn't text her back and just assumed the entrance we went in on Sunday was the main one. I think I was wrong, seeing as I was standing there alone for half an hour, but again who really knows? haha, obviously not me. However they are very nice people and called me one last time before going into Oktoberfest :)) so it was all groovy, I was saved from the lonely heat and extreme awkwardness. Side note: In Germany you only pay for outgoing texts/calls, which is why I was able to receive theirs.

We ventured into the Hofbrau tent and did indeed find a table! The middle of one anyway, we had to hop over the railing that surrounds all the tables in our dirndls, but I would like to think I pulled it off with at least a small amount of grace :) I had a lovely chat with two Greek guys, one who works in Munich at BMW and the other who was just visiting.

Hofbrau:

This picture is kind of deceiving, it only LOOKS like there are lots of open places. Those tables are all reserved for the evening by people who have lots of money (30 euros each).

On the other side of us were some very drunk Italian men so my friends were not having as nice of a time as I was, and we all decided to move on to a tent that I still have no idea how to pronounce correctly or spell, haha. Oh hold up, I conveniently took a picture of it!

This tent also involved hopping over railings, but everyone was standing on the benches at that point so it was totally normal. Next to our rowdy, young people section was what looked like a VIP section since it was full of older, established looking folk who remained seated. I definitely want to be a part of that action one day. Each table had a FULL PLATTER of meats and cheeses and other deliciousness :))

They also sells these cookie necklace things at like every other stand, between the bratwurst and Oktoberfest T-shirts. And yes that does say 35 euros, but that particular one is about the size of my entire upper body.

On Wednesday we had to go register for classes. I THINK I got the classes I want, so I don't have class on Fridays or Mondays EEEEK! But I'm not totally sure cuz they didn't have any centralized system to count the total number of people signed up for a class, each of the workers signing us up had a list from only their computer and I still haven't received any confirmation emails :/ any who, my British friend Kate and I spent the afternoon enjoying the small amount of sun that was peaking out between the clouds at the Englischer Garten, as were a lot of half dressed people and one COMPLETELY undressed man. Apparently that's a common occurrence. But don't worry, he's well outside these pictures.