Day 21: Oktoberfest

Phew… Time flies… It feels like I arrived yesterday and it's already been almost three weeks. On Friday afternoon, I had arranged to meet Juan to go to Ikea to buy a blind for my room, so the sun doesn't wake me up in the face every morning. He had to buy a microwave, as his parents had decided to give us one as a gift for us living in our house. Just before leaving the house, Aida, a girl from Alicante, calls me to convince me to go to Munich for Oktoberfest. The Spaniards had been talking about the possibility of going for several days. I wasn't very sure I wanted to go, basically because I didn't know where we were going to sleep and because with the plans they were making, the trip was going to be very expensive. I asked her to give me time to think about it.

Oktoberfest is… well, it's best if I copy what my dictionary says about this festival: “The annual beer festival, Oktoberfest, takes place in Munich, on a huge open space where beer tents, roller coasters, and all kinds of attractions are set up. It starts in September and ends on the first Sunday of October, lasting for two weeks. People sit at long wooden tables and drink beer in huge liter mugs, eat pretzels, and enjoy live music from bands. It's a great attraction for both tourists and locals.” The truth is that after reading this, I thought Oktoberfest was a huge, grassy expanse full of good-natured Germans in their traditional costumes and Germanic blondes serving free beer everywhere, with music and joy...

During the visit to Ikea, I sounded out Juan to find out his plans for the weekend. He was going to Leipzig to see a classmate. So if I stayed in Dresden, I would be alone. Aida had told me that we would travel with a Wochenende Ticket (the Wochenende Ticket is a special ticket from Deutsche Bahn that allows you to travel throughout Germany, for a whole weekend and up to 5 people, using regional trains for only €30, which comes out to €6 per person). And that we would sleep in the residence of a friend of Jose's (a guy from Seville who was studying at TUDIAS), instead of sleeping at the train station as they had originally planned. Seeing that the trip was going to be much cheaper than I thought, I decided: when I returned from Ikea, loaded with the blinds, sheets, and a plush rat (for my sister), I called quickly to say that I would go, that I had thought about it well, that I didn't want to miss the first Erasmus madness.

We were leaving at twenty to twelve from the train station. When I saw the travel plan, I realized that the Wochenende Ticket is not so fantastic: you can use all the regional trains in Germany, fine, but those trains stop in every town with more than 7 inhabitants, and then the transfer between train and train can be immediate or you might have to wait several hours. In the end, traveling a large distance like the one between Dresden and Munich can become eternal.

On the half-ruined, under-construction platform of the station, a good group of Spaniards and Argentinians gathered. I didn't know half of them; they had just arrived from Spain and had found out about the trip by chance. Also, at the last moment, when the train doors were closing, the ones from Zaragoza arrived. In the end, there were about twenty-something of us in total. The trip, despite being so long, was very enjoyable. At the transfer in Chemnitz, which was three hours (see the photo above), we had a good party, like a street botellón (outdoor drinking party). A good opportunity to meet new people: Manu from Zaragoza, Quique from Denia, Alberto from Jaén... We made all the noise in the world, but the station was deserted, and no one said anything to us. On the train, we were quieter, resting.

When we arrived in Munich, we were extremely eager to run to the residence of the guy who was going to host us, leave our backpacks, and quickly go to the festival. The guy at the residence got angry when he saw us arrive. Jose had told him that he was going with a few friends, and 23 of us showed up. We agreed to leave the discussion for the night, so we could get to the fair as soon as possible. When we got there, I was a little disappointed; it was the typical fairground with roller coasters, carousels, merry-go-rounds, but, in between, there were huge halls decorated with beer motifs. The halls were where the party was held, and each hall belonged to a beer brand. In the little streets, there were a lot of people dressed in traditional costumes, and despite it raining a bit, everyone was very lively and going from one place to another. There were stalls selling hats, sausages, pretzels, tobacco, cotton candy, potatoes... but the prices were very high; for example, a stick with a piece of cotton candy cost €6!!

The people from the Munich residence had already warned us that although it was 11 in the morning, we had arrived very late and that it was going to be difficult for us to enter the halls. Some had private parties organized by an association or a company. We tried to enter about five tents but they were all packed, with a huge line at the door. In some, they told us that no one would be able to enter all day, and in others, we realized that there was no music group inside, which made the tent much less appealing. We got in line at the fifth tent and waited 1 hour to enter. When we were at the front of the line, the bouncers told us that they had just received the order to only let in people with a special bracelet that acted as a VIP pass. We were very discouraged because we saw that it was half-past one in the afternoon, we were already tired, and we still hadn't entered any tent. People wanted to leave, especially those from Munich, but we convinced them to wait a little, that with the amount of line there was (the people in the line were starting to get nervous and a little violent), it was unlikely that we wouldn't enter in an hour, and what was an hour compared to the 3 we had spent trying to enter? As soon as we convinced people not to leave, the bouncer let half of us in, and after a little while, the rest entered. Upon entering, I took this photo:

The first impression was overwhelming, a lot of drunk people were dancing to the sound of music from an orchestra that was on a circular stage on one side of the tent. For us, we hadn't fully entered yet, because inside it was packed and we had to find a place to sit, because if you're in the aisle, they kick you out, and if you're not sitting, they don't serve you. It took us another hour to sit down. We sat next to some big Italian guys who had come for the atmosphere but had stayed for the beer. They invited the girls from our group to sit with them; when they secured their seats, they made room for the rest of us. They scared me a little because they were so big and had shaved heads. Once seated, with a beer in hand, the party began.

Everyone was very lively, dancing and singing along to what the orchestra was playing. You could talk to anyone around you, and everyone was very friendly. Once the orchestra leader saw the Spanish flag that a guy from Soria was carrying, he started playing the pasodoble “Qué viva España” for us; it was very fun. The orchestra played the official Oktoberfest song every so often, which was one that said:

which means: “A toast, a toast, to cheerfulness.”

The beer cost €7.10 per liter mug, but you had to pay with the exact change, because otherwise the waitresses (who were a bit witchy) wouldn't give you change back. If you paid with a €10 bill, you were lucky if they gave you €2 back. In addition to the witchy waitresses, who if they saw you with an empty mug would force you to buy another or call security to throw you out, there were girls who went around with baskets of pretzels or salty knots (which cost €5), with a camera taking photos (the photo cost €8), or selling tobacco and cigars. All the orchestra's songs were very danceable “Greatest hits” that everyone knew. This video that I found on YouTube from the same tent can serve as an example:

At half past eight, when we were already tired, we left the tent. We ended up hugging the Italians who had initially scared me and inviting them to Dresden. At the exit, we saw that at night, the fairground was like a lawless city. There were fights everywhere. Very hard fights with high kicks to the neck and things like that. The fights in which the tent bouncers participated couldn't be called fights, but beatings, because between 3 or 4 bouncers gave a beating to any poor soul. They grabbed him and threw him to the ground (but they threw him upwards, if possible making him fly several meters and fall headfirst), and when the poor man, whose only crime was touching a waitress's butt or trying to steal a mug and then making the mistake of getting a little cocky, tried to get up, a rain of kicks fell on his whole body. After leaving the lawless city, we headed to the residence, after stopping for dinner at Burger King (which is cheaper than in Spain). We were exhausted after the long journey and the whole day of partying. When we arrived, that guy who was letting us sleep in his residence acted like a jerk, and told us that we couldn't all sleep in the hallway that he had reserved for us, he called the people from his residence to see those of us who had gone and laughed at us.

Deep down, it didn't matter how many people were going to sleep in his residence, because the room we were in was the hall for the guy's room and another person's room. We weren't bothering the other person because they weren't there, and the twenty-something of us fit perfectly.

In the end, the guy told us that half of us couldn't sleep there, and forced us to decide who would leave. A group of people told him to go to hell, we decided to skip seeing the city the next day, and we returned to Dresden that same night, and thus we gave the opportunity to sleep in the hostel to the people who didn't want to leave (since if we all stayed, we would have to go to the station). The return trip was just as long and hard as the outward journey, but with the difference that we had all the drunks in Germany on the trains, drunks who hugged us, fell asleep on our shoulders, put their feet in our faces...

Another inconvenience was that each train had a different temperature, and there were some where it was hot, others where it was cold, and others where it was extremely hot. When we arrived in Dresden at 11:30 pm (we had left at 0:00!), we were all exhausted. My whole body ached and I was worn out. Despite all the inconveniences and the long journey, I think the whole trip was worth it.

Next post: Day 26: The Semester Begins

Previous post: Day 18: Of Closed Groups and Barbecues