a german girl in germany drinking beer during Oktoberfest? unheard of!

Oktoberfest was FUN. I will say is that all of the German people embraced me with open arms and liters of beer. Thank you, Germany!

For those of you that don't know much about Oktoberfest, there are a few things that you need to know. (Wikipedia actually has some great information that helped me with my pre-trip research.) First, this is the biggest fair in the entire world with over 6 million people attend yearly. That is a whole lot of people. Most of the tend to be from Bavaria. I met quite a few of them and they were very nice. To even drink beer, you had to enter one of the fourteen tents. Once in there, it was like its own giant party inside the actual event. Each have their own aspects that make it unique to the type of beer served.

After driving in the bus for 10 hours, we finally got to Oktoberfest. This was probably around 7 am. That means we had 2 hours to kill before everything actually started so we roamed the deserted streets. Everywhere we looked we saw people dressed in the traditional German attire. I was so jealous. I wanted one of those outfits! We finally ran into a group of people we knew and jumped in a line (where I have a whole new understanding of people touching) for one of the tents: Schottenhamel. We had an hour and half left to go.

Around 9:15 am we finally made it into the tent. Our next mission: find beer.

Immediately, we found some seats with friends and started drinking. Then we found pretzels. So good! I also tried some white sausage thingy. That was also delicious. There was some special sauce with them which made it even better!

I even met a few people who went to Illinois.They saw my sweatshirt and yelled, "Illinois! Yay!" (At the hotel, a guy even informed me that he used to live in northern Illinois, about an hour from the border. Now, he lives in Frankfurt, Germany with his family. Crazy, huh?)

So, basically, I had a great time! I drank some beer, made some interesting memories, met some great people, and laughed a lot. I wish you all could be there!

The way back was just as fun. I finally got to see the German countryside. Beautiful.

Thanks, Munich. You were pretty fantastic. To see all the pictures, look at the slideshow on the right side. (Some were stolen from friends.) Now, back to reality and classes.