oktoberfest!
ok, i have been away from home for almost two months already. surprisingly, im not a single bit homesick. Maybe sometimes, i miss the food and the cheap prices. and the comfort of being at home, where the people around me are people whom i have been around with for the past like 21 years. but im coping really well, i believe. :)
I wish i had the discipline to start bloogging the moment i was in France, because now i owe myself like a France post and a Sweden post. But im just gonna cheat abit and talk about how oktoberfest went. after all, that was probably one of the biggest highlight of my exchange. :)
We went off in the wee hours of the morning on fri, got to munich after a long bus ride + plane ride + bus ride at like noon. first meal at a shop near germany's haufbahnhof (impressive right, finally can use the german words i have been learning so hard!). shared a pizza, which was almost timbre's standard. and had a mixed (dark + white) beer with david. which was, totally awesome. i mean thats the kind of life i would like to have. awesome weather, maybe not so friendly waiter, good food and beer and great company. we went to collect our beer steins and tshirt and then headed off to the campsite. germanys railway system is a huge mess and it was quite comfusing at first, but like all other things in life, it got easier after we used the line for more times. but its reallly damm inefficient, i spend like 20mins waiting for the train once. not that i really mind, cos the 20mins was spent comhoring cos they had old school railway tracks, like the kind that the couple lie on in inception and be run over. in fact, i thought the rails at my camp site was such a pretty setting, it might be a great place for proposals and such. ^^ oh but i was hypenventilating for like 10mins at the campsite, when i saw that my period came. like 1 week early, i really wanted to scream and shout. i hate this feeling of being not in control. thankfully things got better after a while. or maybe i just resigned to fate. the evening ended with the start of the beer challenge. it was a tour of the bars and places with beer. like the pubs and the beer gardens, and at each place we had at least half a litre of beer. the last stop was a pubbish clubbish place, pretty bad music but we were all kind of tipsy, despite how i controlled drinking slowly and peeing alot din help much. i guess i kind of blacked out abit, but things were back in control after i saw that someone else in the group needed more help and i shldnt weigh everyone down. sleep for the first night was bad, 5 of us girls were in a tent, which was considerably ok, i think i had gotten used to the technique of sleeping well in a small space. but it was so so cold, i really thought i would just freeze and die, and not see daylight.
the second day we started the morning at a really like restaurant, it was an outdoor kind. like a perfect place to laze there with beer, loved ones, good conversations and good food. went shopping thereafter. but dint buy anything cos i was rather lazy to try on birks or boots and i was too lazy to carry stuff. headed to the beer tents around the afternoon trying to catch the parade but missed it cos of the many distractions along the way. that day we walked around the tents, it was a really huge carnival i can barely tell my way around actually. then we headed back to campsite to dump our stuff and dinner was at the food tent. we had german sausages pork knuckles and alot of potatos and sauerkaut(sp?). food was awesome! we went back to the carnival to catch the night scene at the tents. kind of split up with the group and things got quite bad from there. all i can say is probably thats one of the nights i lost my rational thinking and made bad decisions. but i guess we all learn, it made me appreciate what i have around me much more.
the third day started out lazy cos we decided to sleep in after all the hectic action the night before. we went for the free food and beeer, and went for the walking tour. the tour was pretty interesting although i wish i was a bit more awake cos at some parts all i really wanted to do was to let my eyelids touch each other and sleep, even while standing up. the day ended well with packed food from all over, mostly bk and macs (cheap!) and we bought some alcohol from the alcohol shop. ate and chatted a bit before falling to good sleep.
the fourth day was just spent travelling back to oslo. we had to take a bus to airport. a flight and then another bus back to oslo. each of the journey i KOed and slept like a log.
it was probably a weekend that i drank more beer than i ever did the first half of the year. there were rough parts but pretty much enjoyable, and memorable - the things we did. :)