Oktoberfest aka OkSOBERfest

Gutentag! 

So, as we try to catch up to our current activities, we decided it was necessary to devote a whole blog post (is that what these are called?) to our first trip out of Barcelona, MUNICH! After successfully getting out of our abroad program field trip for that weekend, we were ready and excited to meet up with our UCLA friends in Munich. Excited, of course, for the culture and museums of Munich...of course. We arrived in Munich on Friday morning after getting very little sleep the night before (due to a mishap with taking the wrong bus in the wrong direction for a long amount of time), and went to our fancy Marriott hotel on BERLINER street. The hotel was on a street with my last name in it! It was meant to be! After putting our stuff down, we went to go explore the city center of Munich. Most of the buildings were very cool, and we happened to stumble upon a traveling exhibit of the actual European Cup Football (soccer) trophy. It was pretty cool and very random to see the trophy/other soccer-related things. After that, our friend Josh discovered Lederhosen (the traditional German outfits- see later pictures) and was determined to find some, but unfortunately, they aren't really sold for less than 200 euros.  Apparently, in Germany, they don't mass produce things like cheap Lederhosen- so different than the States! They don't like to commercialize their traditional holidays like we do...

The next day was the START of Oktoberfest.  It was also the arrival of our friends Gabrielle, Bret and Ben! We got to Oktoberfest before the actual start of the festival, and got to see inside a beer tent when they actually started serving the beer, which was sooo crazy.  All of these intense German people were standing on tables, singing, dancing and absolutely SCREAMING for the beer.  The beer maidens are not the small, delicate German girls Josh was hoping for- instead they were pretty intense women who could carry up to 9 liters of beer in their arms, while not spilling. Very impressive!  We spent the day wandering the festival, drinking beer at different tents, and generally just being in awe of the strange mix of family carnival and a festival entirely dedicated to beer. At the beginning of the day, these three people came up to us and asked how we had gotten our beer, and it turns out they were from Spain, and ended up spending most of the rest of our weekend with us! (they were also students- we promise they weren't sketchy). The beer was delicious- definitely better than any beer we've ever had back at home. Definitely the first time Caitlin enjoyed drinking a beer. Each tent had a different kind to try, but our favorite was the dark wheat beer that we had at dinner later that night.  

The next day we pretty much repeated our Oktoberfest exploring, walking and drinking with random people we sat down with.  There was even a family sitting next to us, whose BABY was downing a beer. Slightly adorable, yet slightly disturbing. We learned how to "prost" or cheers in german, where you say "PROST!" look someone in the eyes and clink your glass. We all felt very cultured.  It was all very stereotypical of what you would picture Germany/Germans to be like- way to live up to your hype, Oktoberfest!

Our friend Ben prost-ing with a baby

with Gabrielle

adios amigos!