Moving, Munich, Oktoberfest, and Füssen

Yesterday (Saturday) we finally got the Internet up and running, so I'll start this post now and see how long it takes to finish. Last Thursday after work I moved out of Albert Schweizer Haus and into Attila (Slovakia) and I's new apartment. At that point there was only one (pullout) bed and the apartment was freezing cold so I wasn't too pleased, to say the least. Now though there are two beds, and we've broken up the corner couch, putting one half in the entrance way, making the living room a bedroom. Also, now the heat is 'on' and the wireless is up, so it is much better. Here are a few photos of the place before we moved the beds and couch around:

The Kitchen

Bathroom. Notice the personal water heater (very common)

A tub in Europe?!?!! I think it's the first one I've seen.

The living room before we moved stuff around. Now my bed is in the far corner.

The entryway where my bed used to be and where the couch is now.I'll take a photo of the outside of the house and the garden next time I'm home during daylight hours, might be a while...

That night MA and I took the night train to Munich. This train was much nicer and much more organized than the others I've been on. I guess that's the difference between Western Europe and Eastern Europe; one has complementary chocolate croissants and bottled water, the other has angry border patrol officers and complementary near-abandonment in the Czech republic.

Friday - Oktoberfest
We arrived at 6:30am and were met by Henrik and Marina who arrived from Croatia at 5am. After a nap at Henrik's we walked down to Oktoberfest, arriving around noon. As it was pouring rain we ran into the first tent we saw, the Löwenbräu tent (Pronounced "Loovenbroy"). These 'tents' are only in place for the three weeks of Oktoberfest but they are huge arenas. The Löwenbräu tent was mid-sized and held 4,400 people all sitting at tables, some hold over 8,000!
Inside was just one huge party, with over half of the people in lederhosen and dirndl. In the center you can see the large band-stand where they played German drinking songs including the classic "Ein prosit, ein prosit, der germütlichkeit!" Which roughly translates to "a toast, a toast, traditional good times" it's hard because gemütlichkeit really doesn't have an English translation, think having fun playing board games around a fire at Christmas with family as opposed to having fun at an amusement park.As we arrived 'late' there weren't any unreserved tables left. So, we grabbed a table that was free until 5pm and bought our first round. At Oktoberfest the only volume of beer you can buy is 1L Maßes, and Oktoberfest beer is stronger than normal beer, about 6%. Here you can see Henrik's whole €200 lederhosen getup, which was complete with shirt, socks, and traditional shoes.
People were constantly walking around with stuff for sale, from large bready pretzels, to radishes, to cool felt hats. I have to say I was a sucker for the felt hat, but it was a wise purchase as it kept the rain off my head for the rest of the day.
1st litre almost gone...
But don't worry, there's always more the instant you want it. I was amazed by the brute strength of the beer maids, some were holding even more Maßes, with a few stacked on top in a second tier.
Needless to say, in a beerhall filled with 4,400 drunk patrons drinking out of glass mugs, there are a few casualties.
We randomly met a guy named Ben who was an American living in South Africa, and stopping over in Munich on his way to Sweden. He was an interesting guy, who was pretty proud of his bad German. After many claims that he was going to drink 5 Maßes, he fell asleep on the table after about 2.5. After 5 hours, half a chicken, a pretzel, and 4L of beer each (except Marina and Ben, of course) we were kicked out of the reserved seats. We wandered around, made some friends, and eventually left the tent. Outside the rain had stopped, and the vendors were out in full force. A common sight were the booths selling iced gingerbread hearts with love notes printed on them. There were ribbons through the top and girls wore them around their necks.
We wandered through the tents, but most were closed to new people or had impossibly slow moving lines. The fairground looked fun but we were tired and poor, so we got back on the subway heading towards the city centre.
We checked out the Hofbräu Haus downtown but the lines were too long, so we wandered around, stopped into the Hard Rock Café and eventually went back to Henrik's.

Saturday - Munich
Saturday was our day to tour Munich. We started at city hall, which was really nice, but not as nice as Vienna's. That's the problem with living in the most beautiful city in Europe, almost everything else is very nice, but not as nice.
Some random tower, by city hall. We stopped near the base for a breakfast sausage.We climbed a church tower to get this amazing view of the city. Mom, Dad, and Aunt Marilyn, recognize this view?
In front of the city hall there was this 'fish fountain' which was first installed to be filled with fish during market days to keep them alive and fresh.
From city hall we walked though the city to the Englischer Garten, a huge park in the middle of the city. In one part of the garden there is a large Chinese tower with a 7000 seat biergarten open all year long. There was a big band in the tower, and a decorated horse-drawn beer wagon below.
From the garden we got lost walking around but eventually took the U-Bahn to the Olympiapark, the grounds from the 1972 Munich Olympics. We went into the BMW Museum, checking out the old motorcycles and cars, including a cool little car like the one Steve Urkel drove, with the door on the front.
The Olympic arenas and swimming pools were all made out of this metal and glass fabric mesh, hard to believe it was 33 years old, it looked really modern.
When we returned to downtown, we passed city hall and saw this dragon attacking some stone villagers. Imagine someone proposing a building today, and saying, "Now, I know it sounds a bit crazy but I think we should have a large bronze dragon scaling the building, scaring away some hand-carved stone villagers". This is why I love Europe.
Around the corner from the city hall there is the Frauenkirche, a large brick church built in only 20 years, but severely damaged in WWII, not being fully restored until 1994.
From the Frauenkirche we wandered around some more, stopping first for a beer, and then for some ice cream. In recognition of Oktoberfest they had Beer-flavoured ice cream, which I had to buy, but would never buy again. I don't know what I expected, but it tasted like stale beer mixed in with vanilla ice cream... yum...

Sunday - Füssen
Early Sunday morning the four of us bought a €33 Schönes Wochenende ticket, which gives unlimited train travel in Germany all day for up to 5 people. The 2h train to Füssen passed through the Bavarian Alps, a picturesque landscape of grazing cows, small villages, green rolling hills, black forests, and blue mountains.
From the train station we took a bus to the base of the hills the two castles are built on. We took the scenic route up to the Marienbrücke, stopping to take photos of the amazing views down to the lake and Schloss Hohenschwangau which you will see later. Here is a picture of Marienbrücke taken later from Schloss Neuschwanstein.
The only reason people have been trekking to Marienbrücke for over 100 years is this amazing view of King Ludwig II's Schloss Neuschwanstein
Neuschwanstein is a 19th century palace built by "crazy" King Ludwig II of Bavaria. It was inspired by the opera Lohengrin, and was designed by a set designer, not an architect. This imaginative design was the reason Walt Disney chose this castle to be the inspiration for the Disneyland castle. It was one of the short-listed 21 wonders of the world, and is supposedly the most photographed building in Germany. I assisted this statistic by taking dozens and dozens of photos myself. Here are my favourites:
After walking around the outside of the castle, we walked down to a viewing site for the waterfall beneath Marienbrücke which you can see in the photo above. From the waterfall we walked the 20 minutes to King Ludwig II's parents castle, Schloss Hohenschwangau.
From Hohenschwangau we still had about an hour left, so we decided to check out the Alpensee (Alpine lake). It was crystal clear, with a tropical aqua tint, and best of all it must not have been in the Japanese tour books because it was deserted.
Walking around the lake we came across this view of Schloss Hohenschwangau on the left, the town of Hohenschwangau in the centre and Schloss Neuschanstein on the mountain to the right. Let me remind you that you can always click on all the photos to get larger full-resolution copies. The fall colours and cool temperatures really reminded me of home, and were very relaxing. It was hard to leave knowing that we had a 2h train ride back to Munich, then a 2h train ride to Salzburg, and finally a 3h train to Vienna.
The train from Munich to Salzburg was very entertaining as it was packed full of drunk people in liederhosen, with most of them still drinking.

On Thursday we went to our friend Stefan's apartment to watch Arrested Development on DVD using his projector. It was really relaxing and reminded me of hanging out with friends at home. On Saturday Szilvia, Cora, Sladjan (works downstairs with Cora), and I bought tickets to the 'Long Night at the Museums', where for €10 you can get into 89 museums across Vienna from 6pm-1am. We saw the planetarium, Belvedere Palace which contained permanent paintings by Klimt and other famous Austrian artists as well as the exhibit 'Wien-Paris' with paintings by Picasso, van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, and more. From Belvedere we went to the museum of architecture (boring...) and the Museum Moderner Kunst (Museum of Modern Art). In the MUMOK there were many 'interesting' things, some I would consider art, and some I consider disturbing. The highlights were 'art' by Yoko Ono, and a phone call from my family having Thanksgiving at my Aunt Moe's in Québec. Apparently my conversation was a bit loud, as my friends said they could clearly hear me on the other side of the gallery... Oh well, it was nice to hear everyone's voices again, hard to believe I've been gone so long, and that life goes on without me. From there we finished the evening in the Naturhistorisches Museum (the Museum of Natural History). It was cool, there was a hot air balloon which kept rising and falling through the large hole in the heavily ornamented lobby ceiling, identical to the one in the Kunsthistorisches Museum from my June 10th post. We saw the dinosaurs, then got very tired very quickly and decided to go home, as it was already 12:30 and the special museum buses which were going to take Szilvia and Sladjan home were almost done for the night. Overall, the night was a lot of fun, and gave us the chance to see a lot of things which we normally wouldn't have paid the €8 individual entrance fees for.

This weekend is my trip to Croatia, so hopefully this extra-long post will keep you happy until then. Remember to post a little comment if you can (apparently it doesn't work form some people), I love to hear who's reading.