Our worries were all for naught, as the bus dropped us of at the main terminal, where we went through customs and entered a state of confusion as to how to get from the airport to our hostel. Everything was in German, and us three Americans were at a lost, looking every bit as confused as the thoughts in our heads. Luckily for us, an incredibly nice German man was heading in our direction, towards Hauptbahnhof, and proceeded to guide us there. He explained the ticketing system for the public transport, which is cheaper if you buy it in groups than a single passenger, so we split the costs and head on the train, making chitchat to pass the forty minute train ride. We arrive at our station and we say our thanks and goodbyes, going our separate ways: us, to drink a shit ton of beer, and him, on his way home. It should be noted that during all of this no one exchanged names and no tip or anything of the sort was given; it was done for niceness' sake, so at some point in time I'm going to have to pay it forward. Hopefully I won't get stabbed like Haley Joel Osment.
We make it to our place of stay, the awesome Wombat Hostel, check in and walk around the area looking for a place to eat dinner. We pass by a lot of kebab and Halal stands, but we settled on Thai. We head back and make our way towards two bars, one whose name I can't recall and the other X-Cess (I swear it was spelled like that). The former was a place inhabited by mid to late twenty-year olds, and even though the receptionist at the hostel told us this was "a place where you can get laid--easily" we left because it wasn't our scene. We wanted something young and rowdy, not pretending-to-be-a-sophisticate-while-kind-of-popular-music-plays-in-the-background. Onwards and upwards, we soldier on to X-Cess. It was nowhere near the type of place we thought it'd be (we secretely think it was a gay bar--TOO MANY DUDES), but we were able to have a good time nonetheless, drinking two Euro beers till our stomachs told us "I'm full." We mosey on back to our hostel just in time to catch Midnight Madness where, for thirty-three glorious minutes, beers and shots are a Euro and 1.50 Euro, respectively. We abuse the deal as Joseph Fritzl did his daughter, and in the process we meet two Londoners named Jack and Harry. We exchange greetings and stories: they just finished their A-levels and are spending some time traveling across Europe; we (as you already know) studying abroad and traveling for the weekend. We talk and drink some more, and at some point throughout the night we decide to go to a strip club. There were tons of strip joints in the surrounding area, so we pick one, and enter the saddest establishment I've seen thus far in my twenty-one years. I seriously think a cancer party, with whatever that entails, would've been more fun than this place. The club was empty, the strippers weren't at all into their 'job,' and the music playing was ill-fitting. As my friend Eric said, "When I saw that stripper grinding her ass to Rihanna , I just felt like crying." Afterwards, to rid our bodies of sadness and despair, we headed to the twenty-four hour Burger King near our hostel. We wore crowns on our heads and feasted like kings before we called it a night.
We made plans to meet up the next evening for the mini-Oktoberfest-esque festival that was going on, but before we did that we took part in a free walking tour that was part of our hostel. Our guide's name was Aussie, and he was damn good, taking us on a walk around Munich and telling us bits of history. Did you know, for instance, that all the buildings sans four are all less than sixty-years old? That's because every building got wrecked by the bombs during WWII, and rather than build them anew, the city decided to rebuild them as they were originally and aged them accordingly. This gave the city a kind of Disneyland vibe, where behind every door lurked some one, or some thing, that was pulling switches and levers to keep the city running.
The tour ends, and sometime passed before we made our way to the hostel bar to meet Jack and Harry and their friend Vic, a pretty blonde Australian who was traveling for two months and who defied the stereotype of Australians being loud, big drinkers. Vic goes her own way, promising us that she'll get in touch with one of us when she's heading to the festival, so we set off and board a train, then a bus, and walk a bit, till we arrive at the beer hall. There were, I'm going to guess, somewhere around 2,000 people, a lot of them decked out in traditional Bavarian clothing (aka white-collared shirt, lederhosen, boots, and a green hat) and all of them with a liter mug of beer in their hands. My friends and I followed suit, drinking two or three mugs each, all the while being in awe of how orderly and well-behaved the festival and its patrons were. No fighting, no violence, no aggression of any kind, and not even to us foreigners. We even got Proust-ed (Bavarian cheer where you say "Proust" and clink the bottom of the glasses together, because clinking the top could shatter it) by the man we dubbed the uber-German, a portly, tough-looking guy who had the traditional Bavarian clothing and one better: a feather in his hat! We talked amongst ourselves how a festival of this sort wouldn't fly anywhere else; too many macho-, aggro-, alpha-male characters who need to strut their stuff as if they have something to prove. Dicks, in other words, whereas in Bavarian culture people grow up with beer and treat it like any old thing. I don't mean to say there aren't assholes in Munich, cause they're like the human cockroach, but during our stay we didn't encounter a single one. Everyone was all smiles, as were we after the ample amounts of beer we imbibed.
We left the festival to, once again, take advantage of Midnight Madness. We drank and bonded some more, talking about American and British sitcoms, and got to know better some of the kids in our walking tour. Three of them were in their mid-twenties, sold all of their belongings and were traveling for as long as they could; one of the guys' plans was to be traveling for four years. That takes balls the size of grapefruits, and as much as I like traveling, my balls aren't nearly big enough to handle something of the sort. They're more the size of ping-pong balls, which is enough to handle a couple months and more than enough to handle the Munich club scene. Clubs there don't open till 1am, so at or around that time we make our way to the club district known as Haidhausen. The area as an ungodly amount of bars and clubs all within 60,000 sq. meters (645, 834.52 sq.ft, according to Google), making it look like some sort of carnival where debauchery and and fun are the main attractions. We ended up entering the first place we saw and were very disappointed. The club was empty, save for two people whose dancing was as awkward and funny as they were oblivious to it. The guy appeared to be jackhammering his lady friend from behind, in rapid succession, with quick one-two pelvic thrusts. This was all in the dark, but even so there faces bore no traces of amusement, especially the girl but not even the guy, almost as if each had a job to perform that they didn't care for, hence the absentminded expressions on their face. We cut our losses and took a cab ride home, cause at that point no one was in the right state of mind to make sense of public transportation.
It has to be said Bavarian beer is the fucking jam: it tastes delicious and you get NO HANGOVER. The next morning we wake up feeling great, and because we missed our free hostel breakfast, we headed over to the next best thing: Pizza Hut. I had Hawaiian pizza and it tasted just like its American counterpart, delicious corporate fast-food pizza. We then head to the Deutches Museum, a monster of a science museum that would take weeks, if not months, to fully explore. We were there for four hours or so and saw a good chunk of things, though we didn't learn much. Much of the written descriptions were in German, but it was still fun to see tons of science-y things and to fiddle with knobs and whatnot. Later that day, my crew (and I say crew because we had enough people/we've been hanging out long enough to call it so) and I head to the Augustiner-Keller Beer Hall, home to the finest beer I've ever had. Seriously, their dark house brew is like none other, though it should be made public that I'm not a beer connoisseur. We drank a liter or two and started dancing on the tables, which is what is done in beer halls, before we make our way to the front of the band. That band knew exactly what to play for drunks; their set list consisted of Bon Jovi, Blink 182, Bloodhound Gang's cover of "The Roof is on Fire," and at this juncture in time I forget what else. People were lifting each other up into the air and dancing and hugging, everyone was just so happy (myself included) that words couldn't do it justice, so I won't try to. We head back to the hostel for Midnight Madness, where we party it up a bit more and where at some point Jack goes to Burger King, buys burgers, and hands them out to people in the hostel whilst wearing a crown on his head (though to be fair we were wearing crowns as well). He truly was the Burger King. We exchanged goodbyes, as well as pertinent Facebook info, and the next morning we flew back to London.
That's all...for now. I have more stories/travels to write about, but for the moment I'll just post some photos of Munich; I promise you I'll write at least twice this week.
Me, Alex, and Eric at the Beer Fest
