Nasses Wochenende

This...has been a crazy past few days.

Back at school there was a big protest that resulted in the board of trustees deciding to include sexual orientation in the non-discrimination policy, which was huge news. Then, we got an email from Father Cregan saying he is stepping down as the college president!! I couldn't believe it. It didn't seem like he was resigning due to some scandal, but I'm still confused. I had never seen any indication that he wanted to leave Stonehill. And, I'm kind of bummed because he won't speak at my commencement. It's just like high school when they changed principals before my senior year. Weird!

Here in Germany, things are crazy as usual. There was that time I accidentally dialed the wrong number twice and got a call back from a lady who (in German) threatened to call the police on me if I did it again. There was that time I was going to hang out with my friends and make fajitas but my power converter stopped working when I was in the middle of straightening my hair. (Don't worry, I still ate fajitas.) And then there was that time I went to Oktoberfest for the day. Oh, wait! That was today!

You see, here was the original plan, as nutty as it was: on Friday, take an 8pm train and get to Wurzburg at 11:30pm. Then, we were going to stay at the train station until taking a train to Munich from 5am-8am on Saturday. We would only stay for the day because we had no place to stay overnight. I wasn't looking forward to it because A) I have a cold and B) I don't function well on no sleep! But just when I was getting comfortable with the idea, I learned that one of the girls who wanted to go had her German friend buy us two "Schönes Wochenende" tickets without really consulting us. Each ticket is good for five people on any weekend train trip and it's 40 euros total, so at least it's a good deal. This meant that instead of sleeping in the train station, our train would leave at 6am Saturday morning and after a few transfers we'd be in Munich at 11:30am. This was only better because we didn't have to sleep in the train station, but to my frustration, we arrived too late to find any open tables in the beer tents. And do you know what the main problem was? Rain.

That's right, as soon as we got there it was raining. It was only in the 60s and a few people in my group had no idea it was going to rain. Of course, I came armed with a poncho (to cover my backpack too) and an extra pair of socks, but it was raining pretty hard. I could barely take my camera out to take any pictures! Because we couldn't get into any tents, we had no idea what to do and so we were walking around in the rain and feeling pretty angry and, well, wet. We managed to get in a tent after waiting outside, but all of the tables were full. And these aren't just "tents", they're huge buildings. I was pretty mad because I didn't like that our plans had been changed at the last minute and it resulted in no tables. Tempers were running high.

And then, suddenly, everything was hilarious. We were slowly losing our minds, but it was really funny for some reason. We were all laughing and swearing and still in disbelief that our one opportunity to go to Oktoberfest was thwarted by rain. But, in the end, it wasn't so bad. Eventually, someone bought an umbrella. Though it couldn't keep all 9 of us covered, it was enough incentive to sit at a table in a "biergarten." Biergartens are areas outside the tents full of picnic tables where people can order beer. This would've been good with nice weather, but naturally, it was a mess. But we decided it was the only way we could get beer, so we finally sat on the wet benches and went through with it all.

Everything got better from there. We were all still laughing about our misfortune, and the beer (that they serve in 1 liter mugs) definitely eased the pain. I don't even like beer that much, but it was still pretty fun and I  was determined to try to have a good time. And then, well, I shouldn't tell you this...but some of us just took the mugs they gave us. I know it's bad, but for some reason we felt like we needed to treat ourselves. And trust me, considering how many people there were and how often I saw waitresses carrying 10 full mugs, I'd say they probably had enough to spare.

After the beer loosened us up, the rain almost stopped. So we went to get food, and for me this meant potato salad and a pretzel. It wasn't bad, but I did wish we could've looked around more. There were games and amusement rides, but obviously I wasn't about to ride those in the rain. And it definitely was a bummer that we couldn't drink with everyone in the tents. But all in all, I'm really glad I went because it did end up being fun. We left pretty early and had an enjoyable few train rides home. Here's how the transportation went. I could not sleep Friday night because I was so nervous about something going terribly wrong, but I got up at 4:50am and promptly called a taxi company I had researched. I purposely spoke in broken German, hoping they'd switch to English. They did! I only wanted to do that to confirm that I was giving them the right information. A taxi picked me up and took me to the train station at 5:30, and I gotta say, it was quite the ripoff so I don't think I'll be doing that again. Our train left at 6:10 and we had an hour and a half long ride to Stuttgart, where we transferred for another hour long train to Ulm. Finally we had a two hour train ride to Munich. It actually wasn't as bad as it sounds. On the way back we took the opposite route, and it was great to just chill out and talk with everyone. The group that went were all people who just wanted to spend the day. Most of the group was people I didn't really know too well, but this was definitely a bonding experience. We will never forget the day that we went to Oktoberfest...and we have soaking wet clothes to prove it.

Well, despite the typical bad luck that I'm usually afflicted with, it was worth it. Plus, while waiting for my Strassenbahn home at 10:30, I found out that McDonald's here has veggie burgers! Success!!

Anyway, this possibly isn't as detailed as I want it to be, but I'm suddenly very tired from this long 24 hours! Tomorrow I need to do some hardcore studying, cleaning, and planning for Fall Break. My ideal plan is to find a cheap group tour of some major cities in Italy. Some people in my group are going to Paris, then London, then Amsterdam. I don't really want to go to London and I figure Paris could be a weekend trip, but there are a bunch of places to visit in Italy so I figured it'd be good to go during Fall Break. It's fast approaching, and I'm getting a bit nervous, but we'll see how it goes.

Well, I suppose that's it for now. Perhaps if I wake up at a reasonable hour tomorrow I'll blog again. Also, tomorrow I will post my few Oktoberfest pictures, so get excited, because there's a lot of leiderhosen action awaiting you. Talk to you soon!!



There's always a happy ending.