OKTOBERFEST and other stuff...

9/16 - Not much to note today - went to dinner with Yuen, Dean, and Kirill (the Russian guy who I couldn't remember his name last time I mentioned him) to this little Greek resturant down the street and had a tasty meal and some sweet Greek wine in the basement of this place - kinda cool. Though the dinner got off to a bad start when they gave us a shot of "schapps" before we sat down - it was actually Ouzo, the licorice flavored liquer from Greece - and as many of you know, licorice anything and me just don't mix!! Anyway, after dinner we went to the trusty old Schonbuch Biergarten for a few beers.

9/17 - We woke up at the crack of dawn and headed to Munich with Yuen, Dean, and Chris in Dean's BMW 116i - weird little One Series BMW. After realizing that Munich was a huge city and we had no idea where Oktoberfest actually took place, we decided to just park somewhere downtown and ask someone in the trian station. We made it there about 30 minutes before the kickoff - the official tapping of the first barrell in the Lowenbrau Tent at noon. Pretty crazy... And now when I say tent, I think of either something you go camping in, or a bigger thing that you can have a picnic under - these German's have a slightly different definition. These "Tents" are massive buildings with a canvas roof - I guess the canvas roof allows them to technically be called a tent! Anyway, it was standing room only, and you can't get a drink unless you're sitting, so we stood and watched for a while, then went around the grounds and took in the sights. There are these huge tents everywhere, but its also like a giant carnival with rides and bumper cars and street venders everywhere. Lunch ended up being a brat on a bun with some mustard in the rain. Oh, I didn't mention that it was freaking COLD and rainy - 7C which is in the low 40F's. So needless to say, we weren't gonna stroll around that for long, so we decided to head over to the Deutsches Museum. This Museum is insanely huge and full of all kinds of technology, etc from the past. We were there only for about two hours, and I had to basically run through it and I don't think I saw half of it...and you know I was moving fast because I only took a few pictures in the beginning before I realized how huge it was. After the museum, we headed over to the Hofbrauhaus and sat out in the biegarten in the cold (at least it had stopped raining) and had dinner and three liters of beer...each (except Yuen since he was driving back). Yes that's right, 3 liters of beer in about 3 hours - as you can imagine, we weren't really feeling the cold much after that! The trip back to Boeblingen wasn't without incident...about halfway home, Dean, being the lightweight, ended up yakking all over himself in the car before Yuen could pull over - good times. Man, this was the first time I've had someone do that in a car I was in (another arguement for the fact that I didn't really get the college experience!). Anyway, pics from the Oktoberfest and Hofbrauhaus here.

9/18 - Yuen and I got a late start and headed to Stuttgart to check out the Mercedes and Porsche Museums - Mercedes was very in depth and well done, but both were pretty cool. And of course, being a car thing, I took pictures of everything (Mercedes here, Porsche here). We just drove around Stuttgart the rest of the afternoon with the top down, taking in the city. Dinner was at this very trendy little Thai restaurant Yuen had found last month - had some yummy chicken curry dish. Laid back day after a loooong day in Munich!