Friday October 12, 2007
8:24 p.m.
Dublin
So it’s been a while since I’ve made a real journal entry. I am sorry for that, both for the sake of you, a loyal reader, and me, because this is really the best thing I have for keeping track of the whirlwind that has been this trip.
So the past few weeks: I’ll try to start at the beginning and work my way towards today the best that I can. James came to visit unexpectedly, which was great. The day he flew in I was on a trip out to Kilkenny, which I mentioned in my last post, and we met up and had ourselves a grand old time. The most exciting part of his visit (and my trip to this point) was our trip to Oktoberfest. We flew to Munich via Zurich on Thursday morning but didn’t find our way to the campground until about 11:00 p.m. We had no reservations, and when we got to the gate the man there turned us away, saying they had no more room. Bummer. So James and I stood there thinking of what we should do (James thinking along the lines of “Hey I know a hotel would be expensive, but we gotta sleep somewhere” and me thinking more “Hey we’ve got a tent. There’s woods next to this road. We gotta sleep somewhere.”) Anyway, as we were standing there the man at the gate finished talking to a group of what sounded like Italians and wandered over to us, saying quietly, “You guys speak English?” to which we responded in the affirmative. “Well I’ll tell you what,” he said, “there’s a company in there called Top-Deck who has a few more openings, but they don’t want any trouble and are only interested in Australians and English guys, so you go in there and ask for Top-Deck and they’ll work something out for you.” What luck! We thanked him and walked into the campground, at which point James realized that he didn’t have his passport. Bummer. But after checking in, that was going to be tomorrow’s problem. We got set up with a dank, puddle-ridden tent in the back area of the campground, and went into town to find the internet in the beginnings of the find-the-passport adventure. Later we came back to the campingplatz, grabbed a beer out of a vending machine (hey it’s Oktoberfest), talked with some of the other people who had come hundreds/thousands of miles to be there, and called it a night.
The next morning James and I set off to the US Consul’s Office. I know this isn’t what you’re interested in, so I’ll skip over the 4 hours that we spent there, while just noting that our company in the waiting room consisted mainly of other absent-minded (see: stupid, excluding James) Americans who had come to Oktoberfest and lost their passports and who took a fascinating interest in my presence, trying to come to a consensus on whether I was a really good brother or just the most stupid person in the building, seeing as I had a passport of my own and could have been at the festival. Moving on.
That evening we made our way to the festival which was nothing like I would have expected, but probably should have. The place was crowded (it was Friday evening) and James and I set up shop at one of the little side-bars on the grounds and spent a while talking to a 30-something year old guy from Norway who was there with his friends. The rest of the night we hopped around from little-bar to little-bar seeing all sorts of strange people doing strange things and going on all these crazy roller coasters and other rides. We ran into a couple Red Sox fans and sat and talked with them for a while before setting off on more rides and eventually going home to our pleasant accommodations. When we got there the party was in full swing, and we met some cool people from the Netherlands and made some friends from Spain who shared their Spanish Ham with us. If you’ve never had it, there’s nothing like it. It’s the best meat I’ve ever had. Period.
The next morning we woke up to bright sunshine and decided to take advantage of the nice weather to see some of Munich. We walked around downtown through a huge marketplace and made our way over to a huge park that runs along the river (which is kind of disgusting, by the way. The river. Not the park. The park is nice.) After a couple hours of moseying James declared that, seeing as we were wet, smelly, tired, sore, and had a 7 a.m. flight the next day we would be better off in a hotel that night. We stopped by an internet café and found a pretty good deal on the Airport Marriott, which was perfect. We went back to the campground, packed up our stuff, and set off for the airport, which is pretty far away via train. We found the hotel, dropped off our stuff, and grabbed some falafel on the way back to the train station. We got to the festival grounds a little later that night, and went to a couple more bars and went on pretty much every ride that we had skipped the night before. I saw my friend Arndt plummeting downward on the freefall as we were standing in line waiting to get on, and, when he got off and saw it was me, then I think it’s safe to say that Heinrich Arndt Lutjens III was the happiest German to see me the entire time I was there. Good old Arndt.
The cool thing about thrill rides in Germany is that they don’t have all the regulation that American rides do, which means the freefall can go about twice as high as any ride in the States. It was pretty cool, and a great view. We left a little later on and headed back to the hotel. In the morning we woke up (I had a rare half-cup of coffee) and headed to the Airport for our flight home. All in all, it was a great trip, and I think the coolest part was just being somewhere where I was surrounded by millions of people who not only spoke a different language than I did, but that everyone else did too. Just off the top of my head, thinking about the countries that were represented at the campground, I can remember Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Irish, English, Australians, New Zealanders, Danes, French, and Americans. What a crazy place.
I’ll write more tomorrow about the last couple weeks, I promise.
8:58 p.m.
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