Sometimes life sucks, but there is always beer.

So this week has been a bit of a crappy week...

Got some bad news from back home, the weather has been crappy and I had to pay my rent. BUT believe it or not, every cloud has a silver lining and on Friday, I went to Oktober Fest.

Oktober Fest. It doesn't sound crazy, but it is. A time of year when the Germans love to celebrate what they hold most dear, BEER. (Yeah it rhymes, I'm a poet now btw.) Girls in questionable Dirndls, guys in "toit" Ledenhosen and skinheads throwing up on themselves and that was just on the train there...I took a total of 10 trains to get to and from the Beer City to Marburg, that's right 10 - it was as laborious and horrific as it sounds, but it was bloody cheap (only 18 euros there and back!) but more about the train journey from hell later.

The Oktober Fest itself comprises of 14 beer tents (by tents I mean bloody great big halls built especially for the festival, decorated with chandeliers and all!) in the middle of a field with a fairground and open air beer gardens. The latter of which were pretty dead on a day like yesterday, when the heavens opened and created a river in front of the entrances, meaning only the nutters drunk enough to pay 10 euros for an extra-watered-down beer would frequent them.

So we left Marburg at 6.50pm Friday night and arrived in Munich at 6.20am on Saturday morning. Long journey, but worth it...so worth it only after 9am, that is. At 7am we entered the Oktober Fest fields and had to queue for about 2 hours before actually getting let into the Bierhalle. In the queue we were sandwiched between a group of aussie lads - no description needed really - and these italians who had the need to constantly shout at their friends standing less that a metre away from them. After 30 hours on only 15 mins sleep this wasn't really ideal and by 9am I swear they were just repeating the word "ravioli".

When we got let in the fun really began. It was MENTAL. As soon as they opened the doors, the crowds ran. However running wasn't exactly possible, what with standing in a 10-people-wide queue in front of the doors but the crowd did it anyway which meant a lot of crushed limbs and a lot of inappropriate touching. (Yes, remember the aussie lads.)

The hall itself was huge. It could hold over 5000 people, 8 to a table and had toilets, bars and food stalls galore. It was AMAZING and I don't think I will ever experience something like that again.

Ordering a beer was an experience in itself. The only thing on the menu was a bloody huge, 1 litre beer called Löwenbräu. It was incredible and I would recommend everyone drinks a litre of beer at half 9 in the morning, it sets you up for the day...or something like that.*We sit in this place for about 3 hours, just drinking, chatting to fellow fest-goers and generally soaking in the alcohol filled atmosphere. The women who served us carried like 5-10 of these 1 litre beer jars at a time, they were all secretly ripped. But don't feel too sorry for them, we have to give them 2 euros tip each time they give us a beer because of said heavy lifting so they got something out of it, besides blisters.

We left this "tent" around midday. Rookie mistake. Being the penultimate day of the biggest beer festival in the world we weren't going to get another space in any of the 14 tents were we? But no bother, we wondered around the Fest for a bit, judging the drunk teens in their traditional Oktoberfest attire (which seemed a lot muddier and shorter now than what we saw people wearing on the outgoing journey). Nevertheless, the festival was amazing and even the rain didn't dampen our spirits! (So many puns right now...I just don't know anymore.)

The train journeys home were just...I don't know...in one word: Shit. The first one was the worst and as Ricky and Nicole will know, it goes down as one of the worst train journeys I have ever had to do in my life. First problem was the amount of people on the train. I mean I know it was Oktober Fest and all but seriously? I had to stand in an aisle for 2 hours sandwiched between 2 couples, both of whom were a bit drunk and so proceeded to act like they were alone in a bedroom for the entire journey...but I'm not bitter.
Secondly in Germany, you get money back for recycling old plastic bottles and cans and there was a woman with several bags for life actually trying to collect any empty bottles on said train. This train was too packed for someone to be doing that. I mean by all means do it when the train is offloading people, not whilst it's moving, it's just annoying. Thirdly, because a refreshments trolley couldn't fit down the aisles due to all the people, an elderly man, who had a serious BO problem, proceeded to walk through everyone standing in the aisles. I say walk through everyone because he wasn't moving particularly fast but just didn't act like there was anyone in his way. Not a wise move when we are already pissed off and have had this bottle collecting woman (who was talking to herself) try and fight her way through as well. Fourthly, as if there weren't enough people on this already packed train 2 security guards were walking up and down the aisles to try and find the wiseguy who thought it would be a good idea to light up! (We only knew because there was a rather angry sounding announcement by the train driver.) Finally, all these 4 people met in our carriage meaning I literally had no where to stand and the poor woman from couple #2 was having to deal with my entire bum in her face. (Sorry babes.)

But no bother. It wasn't like we had any more trains after this one. JK JK we had 4 more. But I won't bother going into explicit detail about those because I will just get annoyed again and would ruin this blog post which actually was trying to be very positive.

Trains aside, Ricky, Nicole and myself had a really fun weekend and I would love to go to Oktober Fest again, when it is less wet and cold and I have money to pay for fast trains to get me from Marburg to Munich in 3 hours. But we can't always get what we want.

Another plus to this week was that my intensive language course ended! Finally after 4 weeks I can say that I went to a vineyard and spoke a bit of German and got a certificate for it.

I feel now would be a good time to leave you lovely peoples and go and watch some Community which I shamelessly downloaded in HD from iTunes this week as soon as my ERASMUS loan came in. So I will bid you a guten Nacht and until next week...

XXX

*I'm not an alcoholic Mum, I promise.