Oktoberfest

I liked Munich - with lots of parks, bike paths, trams and of course so much fresh and delicious beer. (So cheap incidentally - a six pack from the supermarket is 3.5 euro and a 5 litre keg is 8 euro!)

So even though it was cold and windy I came to think that it was an interesting place. We were there for two days and staying at a place near Oktoberfest, and it was chaos. Everywhere gets booked out months before, and the place was absolutely overflowing with people. The hotel seemed to fall apart while we were there, with lifts and doors to the breakfast room rendered inoperative - presumably after two more weeks of Oktoberfest the place is in ruins.

Anyway, Jannie had a cold and felt "terrible" as she frequently liked to tell me, so we didn't really get into the drunken Oktoberfest atmosphere as we might have. It's hard to get a table unless you have a reservation (i.e. work for a company that reserves tables) or plan to stay there all day from the opening at 10:30 in the morning. Some people clearly took the second option and so extreme drunkenness was the norm by 4:00 in the afternoon, when the party really starts to take off. Five thousand people dancing on tables, singing German songs, all while carrying enormous glasses of beer, creates a unique spectacle.

When the waitress brings you the beer, she asks if she can keep the change, and so when everyone is drunk by that point a waitress could probably make 30 euro per trip to the bar and back in tips, which is undeserved, since she spills most of it on the way by carrying the glasses at an angle (although of course carrying ten steins is still moderately impressive).

We managed to avoid a hangover the entire time in Munich, was is an achievement, and managed to get on the Prague train early enough to get a seat, which was another achievement b/c it was extremely full and people were lying around in the corridors, drinking, of course, more beer.

We met a lovely Mexican couple on the train, Alex and Claudia, which made the long train trip a pleasant breeze and even though the Police became intensely suspicious by Jannie having two passports (and no arrival stamp) we managed to get to the Czech Republic safely, only to find...