Oktoberfest trip!

Grandparents look away... Nooo I'm just joshin', it's totally PG.

First off I want to say I spent an absurd amount of money on this single weekend, including the money for 24 total hours of transportation time. Most of those 24 hours were spent on a train. It was... totally worth it.

The trip begins waking up early on Friday morning to take the first train possible to Bologna. There I thankfully had an hour to solve the maze that is Bologna Centrale train station. I found my train to Munich and after much frustration (how the hell am I supposed to read my German train ticket?) found my correct seat. And we were off! The views were... spectacular. As you will see with my photo album, I tried capturing the views but my camera could not do it justice. The moment I saw the crisp blue waters of the Adige River with the Alps in the background I knew I had made the right decision. I was trying to read a book the whole way and would constant look up from the page and be struck with the awesome view outside my window.

I noticed something interesting while on this train. While traveling between states by car one can easily tell when they enter a new country by blatantly driving through the border. In a train however, that line is a lot less clear. As a curious traveler, I really wanted to know where Italy stopped and where Germany began (in this case my train actually crossed the border at Austria). There were a few things from my observations I wanted to mention. Germans enjoy brightly colored buildings! They color their houses white, bright yellow, and pretty much any other color you would see in an Easter egg basket. Maybe the most obvious observation was the amount of vineyards on the Italian side of the border. The northernmost region of Italy must have a great climate for growing grapes because there are vineyards everywhere. The most interesting observation however is the presence of graffiti in Italy. For some reason I cannot remember seeing a speck of graffiti on German walls. Maybe it is because the Germans do not tolerate such behavior or maybe it is because so much of Germany was recently rebuilt and has yet to be graced with that specific defamation. But in Italy, graffiti is everywhere. It's almost like the Italian state doesn't mind that sort of vandalism. Somehow Italy has given its patronage to graffiti.

I finally made it to the hotel I was staying at by about 7pm, fulfilling my day of travels. A short time later my friends from Santa Clara arrived and we prepared for the day ahead of us by trying to get a good nights rest.

Another early morning, which included free breakfast at the hotel, and we were off to the festival grounds! We arrived at "Oktoberfest" by 7:30am because we were told to get there very early. In case you don't know (i know most of you have no idea) Oktoberfest is the largest festival in the world today. Inside there are 21 gigantic tents ( the largest holding 10,000 seats!) each owned by a different beer company and tons of rides, shops, and food sellers. Once a fortunate person gets inside a beer tent they must find a seat, then and only then are you served beer (by the liter) and copious amounts of food. Well, we got into a giant group of people to enter one of the smaller tents. We muscled our way in, found a table with some German guys our age, and never left our spots! An interesting comradery envelops the crowd of people after the first round or two of beers. By the end of our time their we had sang and danced with everyone in our general vicinity, including the group of middle aged Italian men at the table next to ours. By 3pm we were all ready to throw in the towel. We made it back to the hotel room and grabbed a well deserved nap. Afterwards we got some dinner in the Munich city center and I enjoyed a fantastic dish called Weiner Shnitzel (more fun to say than it is to taste). Full of good German food, we walked around and finally made it back to the hotel, satisfied with our day of celebration.

Oh look, another early morning! Once again I had to be up and out of the hotel early. This time my train left at 9:30am (thank God for the Munich station being to easy to traverse!). Thus began my travel back to Bologna and subsequently back to Perugia. I met a wonderful Canadian couple on the train and we talked about half the way to Bologna. We talked of my abroad experience and their traveling though Italy. It is so refreshing to run into fellow North Americans while abroad. I finally walked into my apartment at 9:30pm, once again 12 hours of travel finished. I was greeted by my roommates and friends making fresh gnocchi, as well as a Chargers victory. I love Italy.