Germany Part II – Oktoberfest

So after arriving in Germany, after having slept only two hours the night before and traveling approximately 20 hours just to arrive in country, we decided to go to the Oktoberfest. There was no time to waste.

We arrived and found a spot for three inside the Löwenbräu beer tent. We were sandwiched between the two most boring chicks at the whole Wiesn (that’s what the locals call the Oktoberfest) and the four drunkest Swiss dudes in the world. It was still cool though; the music, the beer, the atmosphere, the beer. We had to leave our place after a very short while though. We were meeting with three other friends of ours and Kathi’s sister had arranged for a few of her work friends to meet us there as well. Our cramped little table wasn’t going to cut it, so we had to go outside and get a table there. To be honest, the rest of the evening was a blur to me, but here’s what’s been told to me: Rocky, Bea and Shane showed up and we had several more beers with them (I still remember this). Rocky’s cousin and his wife showed up, as did Marie and some of her friends (vaguely remember this). We went back into the main Löwenbräu tent and continued to drink there (have no recollection of this whatsoever). Then the tents closed and I was engaged in a life-or-death conversation with Flo. While talking to him, some drunk Brazilian dudes tried to hit on my lady with one even going so far as moving in for a kiss. I had no idea any of this was happening, but Marie had the wherewithal to call us over to intervene. Flo and I stumbled over and made quick friends with the Brazilian dudes and diffused the situation. I had no idea about them hitting on Kathi’s sister and she was upset that I had some new Brazilian chums. Again, I have no memory of a single part of this. We left after that.

We arrived back at Kathi’s sister’s apartment and I decided to call home. I didn’t call upon arriving because it would have been late at night Tucson time. Now was the perfect time though. I managed to dial the digits for the dial around code just fine. The actual number completely juked me though. Kathi’s sister looked at the outgoing calls log on her phone the next day and this is the number I dialed: 597-875-8942. Strangely enough, no one picked up. Now, for those of you that know me well enough, you probably also know the number to my grandparent’s house. It hasn’t changed since the ‘40s and it isn’t anything close to the number above. I reckon it’s best I didn’t get ahold of anyone in my condition. I had been awake for well over 36 straight hours; I’d had very little sleep prior to those 36 hours and now I had multiple liters of beer in me. Kathi’s sister apparently asked if that number was the actual number I was trying to dial and I indicated that it wasn’t. She tried to ask me the numbers so she could dial them for me and by that point I couldn’t even speak simple single-syllable words like “eight” or “five” or “four.” My home phone number had been reduced to, “bleh.”

A fifteen hour nap cured the previous night’s excesses though. On Tuesday, we didn’t do squat. I did make it into the city and was able to purchase a Kenny Cooper 1860 jersey. That was a must for this trip. That was it for the second day.

The third day was going to be fun again. One of my Enterprise colleagues was essentially a transfer worker who was hired on in Germany, sent to the US for 18 months and very recently transferred back to Munich. I called her the night before to let her know I was in the area but she couldn’t make it out. She was going back to the Oktoberfest with some work colleagues tonight though and we were going to meet her there. I was rested and ready. Kathi’s sister and I left the apartment and began a voyage not unlike that of Odysseus and his homies. We arrived at the Wiesn and tried to call my friend but, alas, no answer. No worries though – the Oktoberfest is a loud place and it’s easy not to hear an incoming call, so I sent a text message. No answer for a while. Then, after a bit of wandering about, I get a text that says she’s at the Bräurosl tent. If you’ve never been to the Oktoberfest, there are the major Munich breweries and they all have tents at the Wiesn. I happened to know the tents by the brewers’ names, i.e. the Paulaner tent, the Augustiner tent and so on. BUT, all of the tents have proper names as well. I don’t know these names quite as well. Telling me you’re at the Bräurosl tent is like telling me you’re on Mars. We finally find the tent (it’s one of the Hacker-Pschorr tents, if you were wondering) and enter it just in time to get another text from my friend saying they they’ve left the Bräurosl tent and they’re on the way to the Käfer tent. Fuck it all to hell. At least we were on the main row where all the tents were. Unfortunately, Käfer is the smallest tent in the damn place and it’s not on the main row. We asked people that worked there and they didn’t even know where it was. We finally find it (it’s a Paulaner tent, if you were wondering) and there’s no sign of my friend and now she’s not answering text messages either. No worries, Kathi’s sister and I can pound down a beer or two since we’re here, right? After a while though, my friend answers her phone, shows up and the party starts. It’s her, her manager and two other dudes that work at her branch. One of whom, we accessorize as the night progresses. At one point he was carrying a satchel, wearing bunny ears and had sugar packets in his ears and a nice white scarf to top off the ensemble. The Wiesn is phenomenal! I managed not to get completely sideways this time and make it home without any more embarrassing incidents.

The next night, Thursday, was reserved for a meeting with two of my best friends from the last time I lived here. It was actually a very nice and quiet departure from the Wiesn. Martin, Michael, Darren and I were like the four amigos two years ago. Darren, from Wales, decided he’d be happier getting paid to do underwater videography and scuba diving in the tropical paradise of the Maldives so he wasn’t available. Martin, from Scotland, and Michael, from Australia, were still in town though, so a gathering was in order. Hanging out with these dudes was always fun, but it always cracked me up that we were all native English speakers and it still took us a while to be able to understand each other because of the different dialects and vocabularies that we brought with us. It was a great time, and very cool to catch up, but nothing exceptionally retarded or funny happened here so I’ll wrap it up.

The next day was a return to the Oktoberfest for me and Kathi’s sister. Her father was kind enough to give us coupons for free beers and free chicken. Word! We went and managed to avoid major incident again. There is one noteworthy thing here though. It turns out, I wasn’t the only one that was hammered the Monday previous. Flo got pretty shitfaced and forgot his jacket. Somehow, my girlfriend made it her own personal crusade to recover the jacket for him. I told her she’d be looking for a needle in a stack of needles but she was undeterred. Don’t get me wrong, I feel bad for Flo and it sucks to lose something like that, especially since jackets are priced according to their weight in gold here, but finding one jacket at the Oktoberfest? Seemed like a tall order to me…

Kathi’s sister and I finished up our beers and headed for the Lost and Found department behind the beer tents. We passed all the Bierleichen (beer corpses) passed out on the hill behind the main street and made our way in. For some reason, only one person is permitted in at a time, so I had to wait for her to conduct her search and return. Now, keep in mind that there were 5.7 million visitors to the Oktoberfest this year. If half of one percent of those visitors lost something, i.e. 1 in every 200 loses something, that’s still 28,500 lost items. Keep in mind, I don’t have any official statistics or anything like that, but given the percentage of people that get shithoused at the Wiesn, 1 in 200 seems like a very lowball estimate. If you lose something like a ’68 Chevy Nova, you might see it again in the lost in found. If you lose something mundane like, say… a jacket, then what are you chances of finding it ever again amongst the 28,500 other lost jackets?

Kathi’s sister went into the Lost and Found area, spend a healthy amount of time in there looking, came back out, then said to me, “I couldn’t find it. You wouldn’t believe how many other jackets are in there!” Umm…. YES THE FUCK I WOULD BELIEVE IT!! ARE YOU NUTS!!!

As a side note, I’ve included a picture of one of the newspapers here during the Oktoberfest. One of the reasons I like Germany is because the abundance of female nudity. They have a channel here that is probably the greatest thing ever for men. During the day, it shows sports and sports highlights. At night it shows random naked chicks. Imagine if ESPN switched to showing nude broads after 10pm. Word! In any event, I mention it here because – even in the midst of the panic the Germans were trying to surround the Wiesn with, they still have time for naked women. The newspaper headline screams, “Terror Alarm – The Wiesn is turning into a fortress!” and yet, directly below that hyperbolic headline, you get a dose of naked ladies and the reminder that you can vote for the September-Girl. Bild newspaper kicks ass!

Germany Part I

Holy shit, it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything here. But hey, that’ll happen when your life becomes a monotonous routine. Nothing ever happens, so there’s nothing to write about. That, however, all changed about a week and a half ago. You’re probably wondering how my trip to Germany has been. Well, punk ass, you’re about to find out.

It started off Sunday the 27th of September. The kind folks at Delta were awesome enough to create a flight out of Tucson at 6:10am. The kind folks at the TSA are awesome enough to suggest that you arrive two hours early for international flights making the math something like A+B= no fucking sleep.

After a quick cab to the airport, we (Kathi’s sister and I flew over together) were informed that our flight’s departure time had been changed to approximately 7:30. That would have been a key piece of information before getting to the airport. Delta DID send a notice. It just so happened that this noticed arrived in my inbox after I’d already arrived at the airport, making it pretty fucking useless indeed. We boarded at our newly scheduled time and flew to Atlanta without incident. Incident found us in Atlanta though.

It just so happened that Kathi’s sister is retarded about her pet rat. As it turns out, it needs to bathe in sand to keep its coat clean. That, in and of itself, is goddam ridiculous. That’s like saying I need to smear shit on myself to keep from stinking, but whatever. Kathi’s sister was unsatisfied with the sand for purchase in Germany. Since the USA is the world’s capital for all things ass-kickingly awesome, she took advantage of her trip to purchase our super-ultra high-quality… chinchilla sand. Fucking gay, I know. Even gayer still was the fact that she decided to take this sand along in her carry-on luggage. Have you ever tried to bring a very fine, and very unmarked, sand along with you through airport security? It was fortunate for us that the damn flight was delayed after all.

I mention all this because we had to go back through airport security in Atlanta. With the sand again. You see, our flight landed in the B terminal and our next flight left from the E terminal which is – literally – about a mile from the B terminal. Having been cooped up in a plane for a long while though, I thought I’d do like I always do and just walk the distance. It gets the blood pumping again, and kills some of the time on a 4-hour layover. We walked the wrong way though and left the secure area, so we had to go back through security at one of the busiest airports in the country. Kathi’s sister wasn’t amused. I bit my tongue and let her be pissed off. I wasn’t the one that thought it’d be a good idea to take sand in my carry-on bag.

Amazingly though, the security was much easier in Atlanta. They have a much higher volume of people that they have to screen, so the logical solution is for them to do a half-assed job. That makes things much quicker.

The rest of the Atlanta lay-over was kosher. All until we boarded the plane. Luckily for us, the three most loud mouthed and idiotic cunts in all of California were sitting just behind and to the left of us. These three people are the reason the world hates the US. No volume control, obscenities in public, bragging about how much they could drink, and so on. Just obnoxious. But hey, Obama’s the President now, so maybe these chicks were actually charming to our European counterparts on the flight.

Everything else went off without a hitch and we arrived at Kathi’s sister’s apartment. I was greeted with a “Charmed” welcome mat. These are the kinds of things you see in the SkyMall catalogue and wonder, “who the fuck are the people that actually buy things like this?” My girlfriend is. That’s who.

Flo was at the apartment when we arrived. He’s Kathi’s boyfriend. He works in a middle part of Germany, but wanted to go to the Oktoberfest with us so he chilled in Munich for one day. It was fantastic that he was there, because, in addition to being a cool dude, he knows the password to the apartment’s secure wireless network. So after getting connected to the internet and showering up, the next logical thing to do was to go to the Oktoberfest.