Munich for a second time

Munich again didn't start too well, my train was delayed, and i got in 2 hours late lucky my hostel was only up the road so it was an easy find. the hostel was really nice and a good sleep which is exactly what the doctor ordered. and it was so nice to see kate and josh again, it felt like ages since i saw them and it was really nice to see a familiar face again and too catch up on what they have been up to the last few weeks.

the first day was an amazing day at Oktoberfest, we got up rather early and made our way to the festival, lucky for us we got into the german tent called Augustiner. i started having steins at about 9am which i think is the earliest beer i have ever had in my life. the beers were massive too i felt sorry for the girl waitresses who brought the beer to the table because the beers were so heavy. theres the story that you should never give a waitress an arm wrestle, now i understand why. i saw one woman carrying 11 beers.
i found out that Oktoberfest started as a wedding gift from the prince to his wife. it started off giving her a giant block of land but she wasnt impressed with this gift (typical... right fellas?) so the prince threw a huge party with her favourite drink, Italian wine. It became such a hit with everyone they did it every year for the next 10 years straight but it got too expensive to import wine from Italy so instead of stopping the event they changed the drink to something more local, beer.
im pretty sure that our crew were the only Australians in the whole tent which was great and in itself a bit of a feat, to give you an idea of how many Aussie come here, we are the only country in the world where the government temporarily erects an embassy because they get so drunk they loose there passports or get a the people get arrested. i never thought id say this but i told everyone i was from New Zealand.
im pretty sure during Oktoberfest chairs are for standing on because everybody did it during the whole time i was there, at one stage we got a 70 year old man standing on the seating singing with all the 20 something Aussie girls (i think he had an eye on a couple of them, can you blame him). another german guy i met had an amazing smile - he hardly had a tooth left in his mouth! i think i was a hit with the everyone too, everyone i met gave me there numbers and addresses to stay at there place as i travel around there parts of the earth. it was pretty funny because i didn't know them from a bar of soap and they were inviting me into there homes to stay. heres an interesting fact about the tents at Oktoberfest, it takes them up to 2 months to build the tents and when you see them you totally understand why, they are HUGE and the get taken down at the end of the festival.
the atmosphere was amazing in the tent, the band was brilliant and played a number of German classics that got the crowd going crazy, at times i felt i was watching euro vision. then occasionally they would pull out a few numbers i knew of, it was really funny and random when they broken into john denver 'country road' because it was such a hit with the crowd but the lyrics clearly state that its about west virginia... what the? but the most religious experience was when they broke into the beatles 'hey jude' hearing everyone in the tent do the 'nah nah na nana na nana nah hey jude' bit was amazing. i thought i was great when out of no where and without band assistance the whole crowd started singing the riff too the white stripes 'seven nation army' i asked a German guy from the crowd if he knew of the white stripes and he had no idea who i was talking about but he knew the riff really well. maybe jack white came to Oktoberfest one year and stole the riff. but easily my favourite bit is watching all the drunk Germans stumble home in there traditional clothing after the event, they were incredibly drunk they all are.

the food i had at the festival was amazing, in the tent i ordered pork which was the best pork i have ever had and i wasn't the only one, the crackling was to die for. outside i shared a smoked salmon with a couple of other people, it was one of the best fish i have ever had. then i had a macadamia nut that looked like it was deep fried in cinnamon, really tasty. and of course sausage and potato dumplings which were really nice, kind of like a big gnocchi.

Munich was such a cute little city i took a tour with a few people which was amazing to see and to hear about the towns history and the Nazi party. i didn't realize that during the war the Germans took photos of Munich so in case it got bombed it would be restored back to its original state, lucky they did because sure enough, it did. on the tour there was a church there that had two clock towers next to each other and we couldn't figure out why you would put two clocks with the same time together. but i think i worked it out. one of them is the real time, and the other one tells you when its beer-o'clock. maybe.
i also watched the glockenspiel do its thing, its original purpose was to let everyone know when the plague was over. its been voted Europe's 2nd most overrated sight and i can understand why, it was built in the early 1900s and i imagine back then it would've been awesome because it would've been so ahead of its time. but now its kinda like being told your going to get a new Xbox for Christmas and then get a second hand Gameboy.
one thing i really thought was amazing was the new synagogue which was chosen by the jewish people. first of all it was build on a new site to signify a new beginning and was built with a glass second level so during the day it gets natural sunlight, but at night it is lit up from the inside and acts like a lighthouse which is designed to guide jewish people that left Germany, back home.

from a incredibly fun day i had a incredibly somber day when i went to Dachau concentration camp. having been to Anne Franks house a couple of weeks before it really hit home, because i saw it from a jewish perspective. on the way there i felt so strange because to get there you had to go through this friendly little neighborhood and in the centre of it was this killing machine. to see and be told the way people were treated physically and emotionally was terrible and horrifying especially when i walked through the gas chambers and passed the incinerators where so many innocent people lost there lives. im glad i saw it but it was a very emotional thing to see.

From what i could gather in the tour and from observation, Germany has copped a bad wrap because of Hitler and what happened at the Munich Olympics and they have found it hard to shake the stigma of what people think Germany's like. i kind of felt sorry for them because its such a nice place i would've loved to have stayed longer in Munich it was such a beautiful city and the people, amazing and i even thought, brave becuase they are willing to talk about there past, be apologetic about it and embrace the future. im looking forward to seeing more of Germany when i get to Berlin, which ive heard from everyone, is amazing.