I’d like to start this blog post off by apologizing to any readers. I have not blogged since October on account of a few very busy months and my incredible procrastination skills. Here is a post that I wrote about three months ago and just haven’t gotten around to finishing and sending in until now. So once again I apologize to everyone.
The weekend after our group trip to Segovia, a group of students from WIP and I traveled to Munich, Germany for the world famous Oktoberfest. This was my first trip out of Spain, so there was a lot of excitement as well as nervousness. The group that I went with had started to plan this trip back in June or July, and it’s a very good thing we did because pretty much everything was sold out. The entire city was overrun with tourists. Even so, we managed to enjoy our time there!
First off, Munich is an absolutely picturesque city in the province known as Bavaria in southern Germany. The arquitecture and style was completely different from that of Spain, which made this trip all the more exciting. We flew out on Friday night and didn’t land until pretty late, so our first night consisted of wandering out to find something to eat and then heading to bed for our early morning the next day.
We woke up bright and early to get to the festival grounds and wait in line at one of the tents, after hearing from the receptionist at our hostel that the tents fill up pretty early in the morning. It was only 6am, and the festival grounds were already packed with people clad in traditional dirndls and lederhosen, and everyone was full of energy despite the early time. While waiting in line, a few of the other girls and I decided we wanted to purchase dirndls of our own, so me and another girl headed out to look for some while the others waited in line, holding our place. We eventually found a cute little shop with dozens of different dirndls, all very authentic looking, so we set out to complete the task of picking out one for all of the girls who wanted one.
My traditional German dirndl in the Oktoberfest tent
We eventually made it back to the tent that our friends had gone into, and thankfully they had snagged a table for all of us, and we got to start enjoying some of the traditional fun! There was so much good food: the chicken, potatoes, and of course the pretzels. We spent most of our day in the tent, singing songs and meeting people from all over the world. Afterwards, we wandered around the grounds looking at all of the food stands and the rides, which looked really cool but they cost a little too much for my college student budget. After a long day at the festival, we eventually headed back towards the hostel and went to sleep early.
The next day before we headed back to Madrid, we signed up for a walking tour around the historical part of Munich. Our guide was awesome, and knew almost all of the legends and history of the city. It was awesome to be able to experience the festival and learn about the history behind it. We also ended up climbing one of the church bell towers and got a stellar view of the city and the mountains in the background. It was an amazing trip, and I can’t wait to return to Germany some day.
