i think i broke my foot at oktoberfest.
owwww.
at least i don't have hemophilia, though. i was bleeding a while ago, and now it's stopped, so i guess that's good.
Thursday, 18 October 2007
Wednesday, 10 October 2007
i went to oktoberfest and i brought an albino, bootylicious babooska, and a chilean boy with catskillzzzzz......
so a weekend in munich. aka: oktoberfest.
the trip can best be summed up and divided into three main experiences: [not-so-]sleeper trains, "couchsurfing", and the stereotypical joy of oktoberfest (and the realization of its unfortunate reality of puke and actual disease). main characters: my two traveling companions sarah and elly, manuel and his frat-house-mates, and random puking bavarians.
the discovery of a night-train to munich at first came as a blessing--after all, pop a few ambien and down a glass of wine, and that rocky train ride complete with obnoxious whistles and hacking compartment-mates turns into a lovely...well...nothing. you wake up in munich, ready to celebrate bavaria one liter at a time.
this, unfortunately, was not exactly how it worked out--the lack of couchettes (beds) left only actual seats, and no amount of ambien and codine cough syrup could save us from waking up--rather drifting in and out of consciousness to crumpled necks and smelly coach-mates (the windows didn't open...how convenient). people sweat a lot. and that's awkward.
the excitement of a weekend in germany, though, left us with a false sense of refreshment, and we headed to oktoberfest at 8am, like EVERY OTHER PERSON UNDER 30 IN THE COUNTRY OF GERMANY. stellar. or it seemed that way, at least, since we were black-out-drunk by 10am. i suppose not sleeping helped to induce this intoxicated state even further, and at least everyone else was too drunk to notice the bags under our eyes, so we were pretty set. even when it came time to meet our couchsurfing host, we were absolutely hammered, stumbling and all. man, don't you want us to stay with you now? it's nice to meet you, tall, blond blob lacking any distinct features! 11am-5pm remains fairly unclear...something to do with brown jackets, beer pong (it is possible?), and talking/slurring politics. then we headed back to oktoberfest where two security-guard house-mates led us to a nice tent where we subsequently imbibed more, setting up for a night of poor/great choices.
let me intervene for a moment, to explain the magical, magical world of couchsurfing. magical, i feel, is an appropriate choice of adjective, since couchsurfing, my friends, is free. in sort, people from all over the world post their couches online, and if you're traveling, and are poor and cheap like me, you can find someone's couch where you are staying, and sleep on it for free. it's genius, really.
the official mission statement is as follows: "CouchSurfing seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance, and facilitate cultural understanding."
And with a mission statement like that, well, if the experiences are waiting, i best not let them escape me! sign me the fuck up. so i am searching in munich for couches, and i send out my emails to everyone who has good references (from previous couchsurfers, who confirm that this potential host is neither a rapist nor any other kind of convict), alas everyone is booked due to the fact that it is oktoberfest. morgan has just about resigned to the harsh reality of staying in florence for yet another weekend when a beautiful, blond german boy accepts her request on the basis that she is cuter than the three canadians that he has previously agreed to host. sketch? yes. important? no! we're going to fucking germanyyy!!!! train booked? check. place to stay? check. WE'RE LEAVING IN 5 HOURS hells YEAH.
so how did this experience quite turn out? what was couchsurfing like? apart from the fact that morgan, elly, and sarah's host was GORGEOUS on every scale of human-attractiveness in existence (like really, REALLY freaking attractive, i'm not even kidding), it turns out he lives in a house with a tall bald man, a chilean guy, a greek guy (named vegono?), and like 5,6,7,8+ other guys (it's actually really unclear as to who actually lives there--at one point, we witnessed a small child running around, and while we originally thought it was simply a drunken mistaken blur, it was later confirmed that one of them--god knows who--has a child), in what is basically a frat-house. like, a frat-house in every sense of the term, both literally and conceptually. as in rented out to students from this particular college for over 75 years, such that the entire second floor of the apartment was filled with just really old antiques such as old fencing masks (creepy) and stuffed foxes (doubly creepy) in memoriam to their older brothers; and in the other sense, the fridge contains no food or water, rather shelves and shelves (and shelves) of beer, next to which are crates stacked one upon the other, of more beer. hmmmm. most importantly, the apartment is decorated entirely in a frat-house fashion, with wooden board as tables and posters of naked women pinned up on most available surfaces. there was also an attic where a bunch of oktoberfest security-guards lived, and fencing matches took place.
(side note: morgan thought the fact that this was a frat house was incredibly interesting, considering that half of its inhabitants seemed to have passed their twenties some while ago, suggesting that they may not have been, in fact, students, but COUCH SURFERS FOR LIFE?!?!?--THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE CONCEPT FOR MORGAN, ONE THAT WILL BE ANALYZED LATER)
apart from the fact that morgan hooked her couch surfing host (morgan thinks that this not a typical experience for couchsurfers, but the tall, blond one was GORGEOUS so...and the details of which will be left for the closest of morgan's friends), this seemed to be a typical couchsurfing experience...it was fucking ridiculous, crashing for three days with someone nobody knew, but the adventure proved incredible (not just the hook)--having to operate by someone else's clock (a drunk frat-boy's clock, to be more accurate) and schedule. in fact, morgan, elly and sarah came to the conclusion that this is probably what these guys do all the fucking time--drink all day/all night, pass out in random places around the house, and the go out and do it again the next day/night. and look at a lot of porn. germans look at a lot of porn. no violence, as it was explained to us (i suppose they are still trying to recover from nazi flashbacks?), but porn is pretty much on every channel, the equivalence of basic cable. niiiiiice!!! man, it made me feel right at home. (...)
saturday was spent shopping (beautiful munich has three beautiful H&Ms) and sunday was spent visiting Dachau, one of the most terrifying concentration camps from WWII. it was an incredibly sobering experience, especially walking through the gas chambers and crematoriums. there were also a lot of photos posted around the site showing what that spot looked like back during its time of operation--meaning that you could look at what looked to be some random brick wall, and then see that almost 70 years ago it was used to support piles and piles of hundreds (if not thousands) of dead bodies awaiting disposal. you also learn that no matter where you stand in the camp, chances are someone died in that exact same spot at some point, whether from starvation, disease, or by another human. while a number of memorials spotted the camp with phrases like 'never again' and 'remember the suffering', i would actually like to take a moment to be very serious (difficult, i know), and to point out that we ARE forgetting, because such suffering and crimes against humanity happen everyday in this world, and continue to happen as others stand by and just watch. does a concentration camp necessarily have to be built in order to qualify these actions as unacceptable? because regardless of the setting or methods of killing, the origins are the same: intolerance and hate. it is never acceptable, it is never okay, and to accept the status-quo or the "nature" of the on-goings in other countries is doing a disservice to humanity.
okay i'm done. that's all. with the serious part, that is. but really, think about it, because often we are caught up in our own exciting lives our couchsurfing and beautiful german boys and it takes such a sobering experience to place the world in perspective. okay so, a few overall notes about germany:
1) munich is very, VERY clean. this may be due to the fact that most of the buildings are new, since WWII destroyed much of the city thus it needed to be rebuilt...but actually the streets are incredibly clean; rarely there is any garbage or dog shit everywhere (thanks, italy). thus morgan is lead to think that germans are prone to cleanlinesses, which makes sense; first their race, and then their streets--the second being a much healthier channel, yes? (morgan realizes what incredibly poor taste this last comment was in--and would like to retract it (but not delete it because she felt it was very clever)).
2) drinking beer at every hour of the day should be acceptable in all parts of the world. even when morgan, sarah, and elly took saturday and sunday off of oktoberfest, they still drank at every meal, since it was cheaper than water and juice (seriously). what a great concept. the USA should note this.
3) traditional german meals taste great when going into your mouth, but are not equally as great when settled in your stomach. very heavy, indeed, it was, and such piles of sausage, sauerkraut, this really delicious pasta-cheese thing, and then a lot of beer, really actually make you feel ill as shit. ILL AS SHIT. my digestive system is still recovering.
4) never, NEVER go to oktoberfest at night, sober. you will regret this decision inexplicably. i can't even being to delve into the disgusting ACTUAL mounds of trash and puke that is everywhere. you don't notice it so much when you're drunk--in fact all of the pretty lights from all the rides and shops are quite nice and happy, and the stumbling people seem friendly and harmless. but sober, you realize that everything around you is harboring obscene amounts of puke. the rides become instruments for inducing dizzying, upset stomachs filled with puke, while the people themselves aren't friendly, they're just vehicles of puking-machines, that can spontaneously spew what can only be described as satan-in-chunk-form, totally unprovoked. so just don't do it. go wasted, sure, and then get even more wasted. but never. go. sober.
5) when you take sleeper-trains, make sure that you wake up at your stop. while this has nothing to do with munich itself, the ticket was bought there, so here it is probably most appropriate to mention this. traveling from munich to home, florence was actually just one of the stops from munich-->rome. so while at 5:30am, morgan, elly and sarah were in theory supposed to get up and stumble home and then crawl to school, in reality, they woke up in rome, at 8am, at the approximate time morning classes start. nicely done. bought tickets BACK to florence, 3 more hours on the train, arriving in the afternoon, after classes were done for the day. sweet unexcused absences! oh, and PS--wind phones charge hella roaming, it basically costs money to breath around your phone. yet texting is cheaper than calling, so opt for that?
THUS in the end, we felt as if we had been hit by a train, after traveling by train for fifty million hours (more like 22, but that's actually almost a day).
the trip can best be summed up and divided into three main experiences: [not-so-]sleeper trains, "couchsurfing", and the stereotypical joy of oktoberfest (and the realization of its unfortunate reality of puke and actual disease). main characters: my two traveling companions sarah and elly, manuel and his frat-house-mates, and random puking bavarians.
the discovery of a night-train to munich at first came as a blessing--after all, pop a few ambien and down a glass of wine, and that rocky train ride complete with obnoxious whistles and hacking compartment-mates turns into a lovely...well...nothing. you wake up in munich, ready to celebrate bavaria one liter at a time.
this, unfortunately, was not exactly how it worked out--the lack of couchettes (beds) left only actual seats, and no amount of ambien and codine cough syrup could save us from waking up--rather drifting in and out of consciousness to crumpled necks and smelly coach-mates (the windows didn't open...how convenient). people sweat a lot. and that's awkward.
the excitement of a weekend in germany, though, left us with a false sense of refreshment, and we headed to oktoberfest at 8am, like EVERY OTHER PERSON UNDER 30 IN THE COUNTRY OF GERMANY. stellar. or it seemed that way, at least, since we were black-out-drunk by 10am. i suppose not sleeping helped to induce this intoxicated state even further, and at least everyone else was too drunk to notice the bags under our eyes, so we were pretty set. even when it came time to meet our couchsurfing host, we were absolutely hammered, stumbling and all. man, don't you want us to stay with you now? it's nice to meet you, tall, blond blob lacking any distinct features! 11am-5pm remains fairly unclear...something to do with brown jackets, beer pong (it is possible?), and talking/slurring politics. then we headed back to oktoberfest where two security-guard house-mates led us to a nice tent where we subsequently imbibed more, setting up for a night of poor/great choices.
let me intervene for a moment, to explain the magical, magical world of couchsurfing. magical, i feel, is an appropriate choice of adjective, since couchsurfing, my friends, is free. in sort, people from all over the world post their couches online, and if you're traveling, and are poor and cheap like me, you can find someone's couch where you are staying, and sleep on it for free. it's genius, really.
the official mission statement is as follows: "CouchSurfing seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance, and facilitate cultural understanding."
And with a mission statement like that, well, if the experiences are waiting, i best not let them escape me! sign me the fuck up. so i am searching in munich for couches, and i send out my emails to everyone who has good references (from previous couchsurfers, who confirm that this potential host is neither a rapist nor any other kind of convict), alas everyone is booked due to the fact that it is oktoberfest. morgan has just about resigned to the harsh reality of staying in florence for yet another weekend when a beautiful, blond german boy accepts her request on the basis that she is cuter than the three canadians that he has previously agreed to host. sketch? yes. important? no! we're going to fucking germanyyy!!!! train booked? check. place to stay? check. WE'RE LEAVING IN 5 HOURS hells YEAH.
so how did this experience quite turn out? what was couchsurfing like? apart from the fact that morgan, elly, and sarah's host was GORGEOUS on every scale of human-attractiveness in existence (like really, REALLY freaking attractive, i'm not even kidding), it turns out he lives in a house with a tall bald man, a chilean guy, a greek guy (named vegono?), and like 5,6,7,8+ other guys (it's actually really unclear as to who actually lives there--at one point, we witnessed a small child running around, and while we originally thought it was simply a drunken mistaken blur, it was later confirmed that one of them--god knows who--has a child), in what is basically a frat-house. like, a frat-house in every sense of the term, both literally and conceptually. as in rented out to students from this particular college for over 75 years, such that the entire second floor of the apartment was filled with just really old antiques such as old fencing masks (creepy) and stuffed foxes (doubly creepy) in memoriam to their older brothers; and in the other sense, the fridge contains no food or water, rather shelves and shelves (and shelves) of beer, next to which are crates stacked one upon the other, of more beer. hmmmm. most importantly, the apartment is decorated entirely in a frat-house fashion, with wooden board as tables and posters of naked women pinned up on most available surfaces. there was also an attic where a bunch of oktoberfest security-guards lived, and fencing matches took place.
(side note: morgan thought the fact that this was a frat house was incredibly interesting, considering that half of its inhabitants seemed to have passed their twenties some while ago, suggesting that they may not have been, in fact, students, but COUCH SURFERS FOR LIFE?!?!?--THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE CONCEPT FOR MORGAN, ONE THAT WILL BE ANALYZED LATER)
apart from the fact that morgan hooked her couch surfing host (morgan thinks that this not a typical experience for couchsurfers, but the tall, blond one was GORGEOUS so...and the details of which will be left for the closest of morgan's friends), this seemed to be a typical couchsurfing experience...it was fucking ridiculous, crashing for three days with someone nobody knew, but the adventure proved incredible (not just the hook)--having to operate by someone else's clock (a drunk frat-boy's clock, to be more accurate) and schedule. in fact, morgan, elly and sarah came to the conclusion that this is probably what these guys do all the fucking time--drink all day/all night, pass out in random places around the house, and the go out and do it again the next day/night. and look at a lot of porn. germans look at a lot of porn. no violence, as it was explained to us (i suppose they are still trying to recover from nazi flashbacks?), but porn is pretty much on every channel, the equivalence of basic cable. niiiiiice!!! man, it made me feel right at home. (...)
saturday was spent shopping (beautiful munich has three beautiful H&Ms) and sunday was spent visiting Dachau, one of the most terrifying concentration camps from WWII. it was an incredibly sobering experience, especially walking through the gas chambers and crematoriums. there were also a lot of photos posted around the site showing what that spot looked like back during its time of operation--meaning that you could look at what looked to be some random brick wall, and then see that almost 70 years ago it was used to support piles and piles of hundreds (if not thousands) of dead bodies awaiting disposal. you also learn that no matter where you stand in the camp, chances are someone died in that exact same spot at some point, whether from starvation, disease, or by another human. while a number of memorials spotted the camp with phrases like 'never again' and 'remember the suffering', i would actually like to take a moment to be very serious (difficult, i know), and to point out that we ARE forgetting, because such suffering and crimes against humanity happen everyday in this world, and continue to happen as others stand by and just watch. does a concentration camp necessarily have to be built in order to qualify these actions as unacceptable? because regardless of the setting or methods of killing, the origins are the same: intolerance and hate. it is never acceptable, it is never okay, and to accept the status-quo or the "nature" of the on-goings in other countries is doing a disservice to humanity.
okay i'm done. that's all. with the serious part, that is. but really, think about it, because often we are caught up in our own exciting lives our couchsurfing and beautiful german boys and it takes such a sobering experience to place the world in perspective. okay so, a few overall notes about germany:
1) munich is very, VERY clean. this may be due to the fact that most of the buildings are new, since WWII destroyed much of the city thus it needed to be rebuilt...but actually the streets are incredibly clean; rarely there is any garbage or dog shit everywhere (thanks, italy). thus morgan is lead to think that germans are prone to cleanlinesses, which makes sense; first their race, and then their streets--the second being a much healthier channel, yes? (morgan realizes what incredibly poor taste this last comment was in--and would like to retract it (but not delete it because she felt it was very clever)).
2) drinking beer at every hour of the day should be acceptable in all parts of the world. even when morgan, sarah, and elly took saturday and sunday off of oktoberfest, they still drank at every meal, since it was cheaper than water and juice (seriously). what a great concept. the USA should note this.
3) traditional german meals taste great when going into your mouth, but are not equally as great when settled in your stomach. very heavy, indeed, it was, and such piles of sausage, sauerkraut, this really delicious pasta-cheese thing, and then a lot of beer, really actually make you feel ill as shit. ILL AS SHIT. my digestive system is still recovering.
4) never, NEVER go to oktoberfest at night, sober. you will regret this decision inexplicably. i can't even being to delve into the disgusting ACTUAL mounds of trash and puke that is everywhere. you don't notice it so much when you're drunk--in fact all of the pretty lights from all the rides and shops are quite nice and happy, and the stumbling people seem friendly and harmless. but sober, you realize that everything around you is harboring obscene amounts of puke. the rides become instruments for inducing dizzying, upset stomachs filled with puke, while the people themselves aren't friendly, they're just vehicles of puking-machines, that can spontaneously spew what can only be described as satan-in-chunk-form, totally unprovoked. so just don't do it. go wasted, sure, and then get even more wasted. but never. go. sober.
5) when you take sleeper-trains, make sure that you wake up at your stop. while this has nothing to do with munich itself, the ticket was bought there, so here it is probably most appropriate to mention this. traveling from munich to home, florence was actually just one of the stops from munich-->rome. so while at 5:30am, morgan, elly and sarah were in theory supposed to get up and stumble home and then crawl to school, in reality, they woke up in rome, at 8am, at the approximate time morning classes start. nicely done. bought tickets BACK to florence, 3 more hours on the train, arriving in the afternoon, after classes were done for the day. sweet unexcused absences! oh, and PS--wind phones charge hella roaming, it basically costs money to breath around your phone. yet texting is cheaper than calling, so opt for that?
THUS in the end, we felt as if we had been hit by a train, after traveling by train for fifty million hours (more like 22, but that's actually almost a day).
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