Prost to Oktoberfest

Let me just start off by saying this: Oktoberfest is the greatest event on planet earth. It’s like a better version of Adult Disneyland, plus there’s beer. On a 1-10 fun scale, this would be at the least a 50. Mason, Aleks, Charlie, Abby and I arrived in Munich on Friday afternoon. Our first stop was our 5 person Air BnB just a few metro stops away from the city centre. Our location was pretty excellent and it was a nice place that could fit the 5 of us. After getting settled in, we quickly head to the middle of town.

Upon our arrival to town we were hungry so we decided to eat at one of Munich’s most famous restaurants: Ratskeller. This was not my first time to Ratskeller as I ate there once before in summer 2014. I loved it then, so I recommended it now. It did not disappoint the second time around and everyone enjoyed a nice German meal with our first stein of the weekend. One stein quickly turned into two, and before we knew it Abby remind us we needed to go shopping for Saturday’s outfits. We dashed out of the restaurant and began to search for some lederhosen.

On our walk over to the stores we accidently walked right through an immensely crowded area. We were quite confused why there were so many people around and a large police presence. Then, we looked up to realize the reason was because Angela Merkel the Chancellor of Germany was giving what we learned to be a vital speech. What a unique thing to accidently catch a few minutes of.

We scurried our best to find some outfits before the stores closed. We all got sizes that would work, but definitely had some room to grow into. Many of the stores had limited selection remaining and we were fighting daylight. To put it best I’d describe our lederhosen sizes as, “Well on the bright side they won’t fall down because they have suspenders, but I could definitely probably wear this size for every Halloween for the rest of my life”.

After this we were planning on heading home to put our new outfits away and potentially changing into some warmer clothes for the evening. But this isn’t how things exactly went down. I’ll give you a hint at what distracted us. It starts with a B and rhymes with deer.

A few steins later we found ourselves at Hofbrauhaus, arguably the most famous beer hall in the world. The three-floor beer hall that dates back the 16th century is where we made our first set of friends for the weekend. We shared a table with some Italian gentleman who Charlie- more than anyone- hit it off great with. We chanted and drink a few (dozen it felt like) steins before we headed home.

The next morning was the big day. We woke up nice and early, got a quick bite, and headed to Oktoberfest. We arrived around 10am, which was perfect timing. Many people were already partaking in the festivities, but it wasn’t overly crowded yet. We headed to the Hofbrau tent were we had arrange tickets months in advance. It turns out we spent pretty much our entire day here as it was the biggest tent at the festival.

Rather than going into every little detail of the day, feel free to view this:

There are a few things I’d like to note about the day. First off, the food was incredible. The chicken that was served was unreal and the potato salad was fantastic. The beer was no let down either.

The next thing Mason and I learned is that going on the most wild ride at the festival can be fun, or a mess. We went on before we had consumed too much beer and enjoyed the ride tossing us around. However, we watched a few other people enjoy it… well not as much.

Lastly, we also played a few carnival games. We all teamed up throwing darts at balloons to win Abby a stuffed animal, and watched Aleks slam the hammer (on his 3rd try) to the top of the high striker. B.A.C. may have been a factor in this one.

We were lucky to be blessed with good weather for the day. There are lots of ins and outs of Oktoberfest that I would be happy to share and recommend to anyone who plans on going at some point in their life. However, I don’t have the time to detail them out right now. (And most of you probably don’t care anyway).

The next day we woke up and Abby was 22! Woooo.

We hopped on a train from Munich to Zurich. We trained through Germany, briefly through Austria, and into Switzerland. Upon our arrival we grabbed some food at an Irish pub. This is where we first felt the inflation of Switzerland and the expensiveness of Zurich.

We made it out of the restaurant without too big of a hole in our pocket and headed to the hotel we had booked. Upon our arrival to our hotel things took a little bit of a negative spin. It turns out it wasn’t much of a hotel at all. The place we booked was on the one scummy street in Zurich and seemed like only a place where a prostitute would be taken. No front desk, extremely dirty restrooms, blood on the wall of our room and even a spot on the pillow (pictured below with Charlie, Mason and Aleks). We quickly grabbed our things and got the heck out of there. We started walking towards the Marriott we saw when we got off the train originally.

We got into the Marriott and tried to see if they had any vacancies, but they didn’t. However, they were able to steer us towards a Marriott courtyard just a few miles away. Here, we were able to arrange two rooms thankfully to the help of parents. We had much more confidence and comfort in our new place for the evening.

By this point, it was already quite late. We still wanted to help Abby celebrate her birthday so we headed down to the hotel bar. A few drinks later the bar was closing. The bar tender offered us some free shots “if we would like to join him in the lobby”. I’ve never been kicked out of a place so nicely.

The next day we woke and had all Monday to explore Zurich before our 8pm flight. Here we walked through the town, saw Lake Zurich, and enjoyed Old Town Altstadt. Abby and Charlie spotted a man walk by with a burrito around lunchtime so we spent a while walking around looking for a burrito place. Eventually, we found it. I’m glad we spent the time to search because Burrito District was fantastic, felt like home, added a little more reassurance that not all of Zurich sucked just our first hotel did, and also affordable.

It was a great weekend for the books. We learned that Zurich is a beautiful place, but quite expensive. We also learned to read a few more reviews while booking hotels in the future. In Zurich, you can really feel the wealth of the city just by walking around and people watching. Nearly every man was in a suit, in additional to all the expensive cars being so common. Munich did not disappoint as it continues to rank in easily my top 3 favorite European cities. To say Oktoberfest was an absolute blast is an incredible understatement. There is no doubt that at some point in my life, I will be back in my Lederhosen drinking beer in the tents outside of Munich (At least the Lederhosen will probably still fit).