So on Friday after school I took the bus to the train station in Darmstadt. Since I was taking the bus at about 1pm, it was full of students from my school! It was kind of interesting. A couple of the them recognized me and talked to me, which was nice. From Darmstadt I got on a train to Munich. In Stuttgart, Erin joined me on the train. When we got to Munich, we decided to wait for Liz and Amber, so we grabbed some dinner. Once Liz and Amber got there, we ventured to our hostel, "The Tent".
We made our plans to go to Oktoberfest pretty late, so we could not find a reasonably priced hostel. We still really wanted to go, so we decided to camp at "The Tent". It's located on the outskirts of Munich, so it took a while to get out there on Friday. We got out there, checked in, and set up our tent. It was pretty late by then, so we decided to hang out there for the night. There was a campfire and a lot of people around. While sitting at the campfire, I saw a guy wearing a Notre Dame fleece, so I asked him if he went to ND. Turns out there was a group of kids from the Notre Dame program in Toledo there, so we hung out with them for the night. They also lent us some extra blankets for the night! Needless to say that was very helpful, because it was very cold on Friday night, and none of us had sleeping bags.
Saturday we got up, packed up our stuff (determined not to return to the tent that night), and headed off to Oktoberfest. Fortunately, Erin's Dad was able to get us into the tent where his company had a table. Before heading in we met up with Pete, a 2000 ND grad. It can be really difficult to get into tents at Oktoberfest since they have limited capacity. But the only way to get beer and really experience Oktoberfest is in the tents. There was a live band and lots of people dancing and celebrating in Lederhosen and Dirndl (the traditional Bayerish dress).
In the afternoon, we headed to the train station to meet Emily. She wasn't able to come until Saturday afternoon, because she had been on a field trip with her school to Cornwall. The rest of the day we spent around Oktoberfest. That night we headed to a bar where we were hoping to watch the Notre Dame game against Purdue. Unfortunately, none of the channels in Germany were playing it. We did get to hang out and watch some football though. The only game that was showing was the Alabama/Florida game, but at least it was football! That night we were able to stay at Pete's apartment, which was a nice change from the tent. Liz and Lotti took the night train back to Vienna because Monday was their first day of teaching.
Sunday, Erin, Emily, and I headed back to Oktoberfest. We spent the day hanging out at the tents and meeting different people. Emily took and evening train back to Roedermark, while Erin and I took a night train back to her house in Weil am Rhein. I had Monday and Tuesday off form school (Tuesday was Tag der deutschen Einheit, German Unity Day). Monday, Erin and I spent the day watching movies and hanging out, and I took a train back early Tuesday morning.
On Tuesday, Emily came to Gross-Bieberau for the day. We were able to buy plane tickets to Vienna for Thanksgiving (there is hopefully going to be a Waldsee Thanksgiving in Vienna), and we talked about our plans for our fall break. We have the last two weeks of October off and are hoping to maybe plan a trip to Spain.
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