all about germany!

Ok, blog time, finally. I've been meaning to do this for days but there was always some reason that I didn't; mostly, I've just been too tired to devote the time to it. But I really am going to try to be more consistent about posting, I promise. On that note, I've posted some new photos, which you can see here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizaswift/sets/72157624936887689/

It's been a crazy five days and there's so much to tell! But, of course, I'll start from where I last posted, which was Berlin. So after our long, crazy day of train rides, we arrived in rainy and cold Berlin around 7:10 pm. We stayed at the BaxPax Downtown hostel, which was probably the cleanest and nicest hostel we've stayed in so far (although the one in Amsterdam was still the most fun.) We went out for a birthday dinner at a cheap Indian restaurant around the corner. Back at the hostel, we made friends with a group of Swedish guys, who invited us out with them for the night. We met them at an oddly tropical-themed bar and the restaurant gave me a free birthday drink. It had sparklers in it! Terrified me quite a bit, and tasted like it didn't have any alcohol in it. We went to another bar after that restaurant closed and we were out until quite late in the night (like...4 am? yikes.) I had a couple cool conversations about our respective countries with the Swedes. For instance, they told us that smoking marijuana is considered so bad in Sweden that their families would disown them, and they would stop talking to friends that did it. (This conversation came up because they were on their way to Amsterdam.) One guy told me that he was appalled by America's arrogance, but admitted that he thinks the U.S. is the best country in the world—"I just don't want you *knowing* that you're the best, that is horrible!" Another couple interesting things I learned about Sweden: they do not eat the Swedish fish candy and they have never seen the Swedish Chef. They were very offended by our "borgity borg" impressions.

The next day, we were very surprised when we slept until almost 12 pm; we've been getting up at 8:30 almost the entire trip. We groggily cleaned ourselves up and headed toward Unter den Linden, a large boulevard in Berlin that a lot of tourist stops are near. Imagine our surprise as we get closer and closer to the boulevard and it gets louder and louder—the Berlin Marathon was going straight down the middle of it! We'd been seeing people in these green Adidas rain ponchos for the past two days and wondering why...if only we'd looked closer and seen "Berlin Marathon" printed all over them! So the big thing for us to see at Unter der Linden was the Brandenburg gate, which was very pretty. It was the first time in the trip that I've really felt the weight of the history around me, especially when I saw some old photos of the boulevard that were taken at the Nazi rallies that had been held there. From the gate, we headed to the Holocaust Memorial, or as the official name goes: "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe." Pretty blunt, eh? At the outside, the memorial didn't look like very much, but as you walk further into it, the ground goes down until you're walking underneath these huge pillars of stone. It was very moving. We then walked over to a large preserved portion of the Berlin Wall, which was also incredible to see. It started raining really hard so by 5 pm, we were ready to get back to our hostel and have some showers. We had Indian food for dinner AGAIN, which, if you're counting, brought us to 3 times in 5 days. Obsessed much? We felt a little guilty for not eating traditional foods, but only a little, since we both love curry so much.

So we got back to the hostel that night and I had a horrible realization: I was sleeping next to The Snorer. Every room in every hostel, no matter how big or small, appears to have a Snorer. I'm not talking about someone that lightly, inoffensively snores. The Snorer is in a league of his/her own (although, it is more often men than women). The bunk next to The Snorer is the worst property in the room and pretty much guarantees that you will not sleep in what is already likely an uncomfortable bed. I slept next to The Snorer in Munich, too, but the guy in Berlin was by far the worst I've heard. It was like trying to fall asleep to the sound of geese aggressively mating. It overpowered the (admittedly minimal) strength of my earplugs. Somehow, I managed a few hours of sleep, but it wasn't easy. We had a very early train ride to Munich, at 6:50 am, so we had to leave our hostel around 6. It was gross out and raining again, so we didn't feel guilty sleeping on the train. We arrived in Munich around 12:50 pm.

Ok, so our hostel in Munich was kind of a disaster. The hostels get really expensive during Oktoberfest, so we booked the cheapest one we could find, which is called The Tent. The Tent is literally a large circus tent that people sleep in and a campground. We were thankfully placed in the smaller tent, but there were still at least 50 people inside. Unfortunately, there wasn't any heat, and it was pretty cold (high 40s to low 50s) the whole time we were in Munich. By the end of our time at The Tent, we were cold, bitter, crabby, dirty, and ready to get away from it. But we didn't go to Munich to stay in a nice place, we went for Oktoberfest, and we really had an incredible time.

The first day we got into Munich, we were going to walk around a bit and see the city, but we decided to stop by the Oktoberfest grounds for a minute first and see what it was like. Neither of us thought we'd be able to get into any beer tents, since we didn't have reservations and it was later in the day. We were wrong! The Oktoberfest grounds are enormous, and it feels like a gigantic county fair. I thought there would only be 3 or 4 beer halls, but there was something like 10. We sat down outside at Hofbrau, one of the more popular tents, and quickly were chatted up by obscenely drunk Italians. One of them wanted to "have a dialogue" with me, away from Alex, so we got him to go back to his friends and then bolted from the tent as soon as we finished our beers. I wanted to go on some of the rides, and I managed to talk Alex into going on the high swings with me. They look like the regular swing rides that we have in the U.S., but they go up maybe 75-100 feet in the air. I thought it was going to be really fun, but Alex was terrified, squeezing my arm the entire time and screaming, "We're going to die! This is going to snap!" Needless to say, I didn't really enjoy myself, and both of us were very happy when the ride ended.

After the ride, we were walking around and I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and there were our Australian friends from Amsterdam!! We were so happy to see them, we had a great couple of days with them and we really never thought we'd see them again (especially not at Oktoberfest, which was so packed full of people.) We all went back to Hofbrau and Alex and I had another beer. She and I left Oktoberfest around 8 pm, back to the wretched Tent. There was a campfire going on, though, and we sat around that and chatted with fellow travelers for a while before going to bed around 10:30.

Our second day at Oktoberfest was the real mess. We met the Australians outside Hofbrau at 11 am and walked around the rides for a while. At some point, we went into one of the tents, where Alex and I had our first beer. The guys left us for about an hour to walk around while we drank. A huge group of Italian guys sat down with us, and didn't talk much to us, although they showed us a love letter that one of them had received and translated it for us. It was very dirty! At one point, a television crew came around and one of the Italians offered to have his chest waxed for TV. The Australians came back and we left to go to Hofbrau again. We found seats inside with a big group of Brits and had another drink. One Australian, who was not really with our group, puked all over the table and into his drink...really disgusting. I feel like 18-year-olds should not be allowed at Oktoberfest! We were kicked off of the table eventually, because the people who reserved it showed up. At this point, we went and got some food, even though we were all filled with beer—I knew that I had to eat something, though!

Sometime after our second beer, I got into a snitty mood and Alex and I started to fight. The Australians decided to head back to their hostel and let us work our shit out alone. Alex wanted us to head back to our hostel but I convinced her to stay (can you imagine? ME convincing ALEX to stay at a party?! major, major role reversal). Then she got into a snitty mood and we fought even more. Neither of us knows why we were fighting or what about, but we apologized to each other and got another beer. During our third beer, we sat down outside with some Germans. One of the guys didn't speak any English and was apparently saying very rude things to us in German, which another German was translating. So we taught him how to toast in English. We got him to toast to diarrhea, dingleberries, and saggy tits. By the time we were toasting to saggy tits, he was catching on that we were screwing with him and was very resistant, but we got him to shout it out anyway. I really wish I had captured a video of the whole thing.

Then we went inside that tent for our fourth beer. We found some (other) Germans who had a friend working at the hall and helped us get some beers. They asked us if we were Australian, so we naturally agreed and went along pretending we were Australian for the rest of the night. We're lucky that there were no Australians with us, because our accents were probably really horrible, but we managed to convince this group of friends. Somewhere after the fourth beer, the night gets a little blurry, but we know the beer tents closed at 10:30 so we must have left around there. Alex and I tried to piece a few things together the next day, but there are a few things we still have questions about. For instance: Alex has a huge bruise on her butt, so she must have fallen at some point, but neither of us remembers it. Alex's coat looks sort of like she slept in a gutter, which would support the falling-in-the-muddy-rain theory. Also: both of our jackets are covered in stains that look suspiciously like mustard. Once we thought about it hard, Alex claimed, "I have a vague feeling of mustard," so we've deduced that we ate something mustardy at some point.

You may guess that we were feeling pretty awful yesterday, and you would be correct. We didn't have the foresight to plan out yesterday ahead of time, so we knew that we needed to leave Munich and go somewhere but we weren't sure where. (We had an extra day in between when we left Munich and when we'll meet my friends in Lucerne tonight.) So we stared at my guidebook all blurry-eyed for a while before deciding just to go to Zurich. Yesterday was definitely the day for us to be taking a 4-hour train ride. We thought we'd sleep on the train, but of course it was the first really sunny and lovely day we've had since Amsterdam, so we stared out the window the entire way. Switzerland is lovely! The hostel we're staying in here in Zurich is nice and quiet, which was perfect for us last night. We were able to take showers (Alex even washed her hair!), which was a very welcome feeling after The Tent. So we didn't do much last night, just cleaned up and ate dinner at the Italian restaurant below our hostel.

We had to check out of our hostel at 10:00 am, so we were able to go do some sightseeing in Zurich this morning. However, it is of course grey and rainy out again, so we're back in the lounge at our hostel. Alex is reading the new book she picked up from the book exchange (a crime thriller called "A Faint Cold Fear"), I'm downloading some television for us to watch in transit (I've been able to do a surprising amount of that! HOW CRAZY WAS MAD MEN?!), and obviously I'm writing this blog. We're gonna take a train to Lucerne around 4:30, and we're meeting my friend Julian at the station at 5:30. Alex and I are both very excited to sleep in someone's apartment and not a hostel. We're also looking forward to doing some laundry...our clothes (many of which have been slept in) smell quite fragrant. It will also be nice not to pay for a hostel; Switzerland is incredibly expensive (which I had heard but somehow not totally comprehended.)

Alright, off to eat some falafel. We really are having an incredible time, although we do miss everyone at home. I'm trying my best not to think about how long my trip is going to be, because it makes me really homesick when I do. But, at the same time, I can't believe we're in Switzerland already! Hopefully I'll be able to get another blog and some more pictures up by Sunday.

Think sunny warm thoughts for us, lots of love, Eliza