September 28th - Paris - Munich, Germany

September 28, 2006
Paris, France – Munich, Germany

NOTE: I just posted 4 or 5 days worth of blogs so check them out if you get a chance! Keep scrollig down...:)

We woke up this morning to a knocking on our compartment door. The staff returned our passports and Eurrail passes to us. Shortly thereafter we arrived in Paris (9:00). Our train out of Paris was not leaving from the same station and we had to take the metro across town. We were both still feeling sick (though slightly better) and just sat around until boarding our train at 10:45.

As we were boarding our train I was punched in the shoulder. I spun around and was met face to face by the two Australian Girls that we had seen in Cinque Terra, Rome, and Nice. Incredibly, they were boarding the same train to Germany. It seems impossible thatt in all of Europe we continue to run into these same two girls. Amazing!

After finding our seats on the train we settled in for the long ride. I plugged into my iPod and listened to Harry Potter for several hours.

When we finally arrived in Munchen it was just after 19:00. We waited for the Australian girls (Kristina and Milly) and then all headed for a giant lodging called The Tent. It is exactly as the name implies, a giant tent with bunk beds inside.

We secured our beds, dropped off our stuff and headed for Oktoberfest. When we got there I was surprised to find that it is almost exactly like a giant county fair (with free admission) and large drinking tents. We wandered the grounds for a while and then ducked into one of the tents. Though I had not planned on drinking anything (because I still felt a little sickness in my throat), I was talked into one beer. I was surprised to learn that one beer at Oktoberfest is equivalent to a stein that holds 3 or 4 beers…

The atmosphere at Oktoberfest was incredible. Everyone had large beer steins and was standing on the tables and singing. There must have been several thousand people in the HB beer tent. We were especially vocal everyone started singing “We are the Champions”.

To our surprise, Oktoberfest closes down at about 23:00. On the train back to The Tent we met a cool german with a fun Oktoberfest hat. After talking to him about Bayern Munchen and Dirk, he gave me the hat! (pictures to come)…

Once we got back we headed to bed. It gets quite cold here in Germany and B and I were grateful that we had our sleeping bags with us.