Return from Germany!

Ok – I left for Germany on Thursday, September 29th and arrived Friday morning. Vroni was once again nice enough to pick me up from the airport. For those of you that haven’t experienced a trip to Europe, the travel day is pretty much like this: you get up at 3am in order to grab a bite to eat, finish packing and wash up in time to get to the airport by 4 – two hours before your flight is scheduled to leave is the recommended time frame for international flights. What they don’t tell you is that the check in desk will not be manned that early in the morning so you get to wait until the airport staff takes their positions. Then you wait at the gate until your flight boards, take off at 6 and spend the next 3.5 hours in the air to Atlanta. After arriving you have to kill another 4+ hours until the next flight to Munich. When you board that plane, all that you have left is a 9.5 hour flight, a wait at immigration, baggage claim and then customs. Good times.

After Vroni picked me up, I put my luggage down and kicked it with her and rested a bit. We talked a bit over a cup of tea but I was near dead from exhaustion (note: I only slept 3 hours the night before taking off so I even more sleep deprived than usual). By the time I arrived in Munich, I had been awake/traveling for 20 hours and with the time difference, it was only 8am in Munich. Ideally, you’d like to stay up as long as possible to acclimate yourself to the time change but I was too tired for that and took a nap. After waking up, Vroni and I went to the Wies’n (Oktoberfest) and wandered around a bit. We didn’t stop in any of the beer tents but it was a good idea to take a walk around anyway, just so I could get up and about. After that, I bought some beer had dinner and went to bed.

The next day was going to be fun as we had tickets to the FC Bayern München game. We attended the game and had a great time (well, honestly – I had a great time. I don’t think Vroni was as excited about it as I was but she humored me). I had initially planned on attending Oktoberfest after the game but repeated assurances from Vroni and other friends that I know made me realize the futility of my hopes of being let into the sure to be full beers tents. With Oktoberfest out of the picture, we had the chance to meet up with Jessica and Christoph for dinner.

Sunday morning was going to be our big chance to attend the Wies’n. We planned on meeting some friends of Vroni’s at 11am in front of the Winzerer Pfändl (Paulaner) tent but even at that early point in the day the tent was full and our admission was denied. We ended up at some little shithole tent but still had a good time. Then we tried to get into the nearby Augistiner Keller but other folks who were denied entrance at the Wies’n beat us to the punch and we ended up in a long line. Since that wasn’t an appealing alternative either, we packed up and headed to another small restaurant/beer hall near Marienplatz. We ate and hung out there before Vroni, Nicole and I broke from the group to catch a movie. Fortune still wasn’t smiling on us as all the movies we were interested in seeing were either done, in progress or not starting for a few hours. We regrouped and headed back to Vroni’s to watch a dvd. The rental shop was closed so we had to select from Vroni’s and Kathi’s home library and choices were, well… less than abundant. I was lobbying for X-Men 2 but was vetoed and forced to watch Romeo Must Die. I was so impressed that I fell asleep.

(note on the picture: in my first post on this blog, I recount the tale of how difficult it was to acquire tickets to this game. Looking at the picture is kinda misleading in terms of judging attendance. There were 66,000 people and the arena was sold out. The empty seats you see in the pic are the corporate seats that aren’t available to the public. Fuckers. They have their tickets comped, or are at the very least able to afford tickets yet their seats remain empty while fuckers like me clamor for the remaining seats like a dog looking for crumbs off the dinner table. I’m not bitter about that or anything…)