a new beginning. or not.

Oktoberfest in Munich!

As promised, this post will be dedicated to Oktoberfest in Munich, also known as Munchen!

So here it goes:

Have you ever gone on a road trip in Europe? Have you ever sat in a car going at 200km/h? Have you ever froze to sleep in a car parked in a random carpark? Have you ever queued, squashed for close to 4 hours just to get into a party? Have you tried sniffing some stuff that makes you high? Have you gotten high for 8 whole hours? Have you been to Oktoberfest?

The questions above basically sum up the highlights of the trip to Oktoberfest in Munich!

Ok. Train tickets to Munich were REALLY expensive to leave on Fri and come back on Sun. Like close to 200 euros. So we decided to drive instead and sleep in the car as we thought it would be a cheaper alternative! Sleeping in the car wasn't a choice as there was no way we could find accomodation in Munich cos it was the middle weekend of the whole Oktoberfest and it was packed!

So off we went in our manual Hyundai Getz which was surprisingly quite good. I have never had a good impression of Korean cars but this one surprised me. It was very petrol consumption friendly and it survived a top speed of 200km/h. The journey to Munich was about 700km including the wrong turns and we managed to go there and back in about 3 tanks! And each tank is only 40litres! My Mazda 3 could never do that!
Our blue Hyundai Getz

The sole driver, Andrew and I, very excited to be setting off! He drove for 10 hours straight all the way to Munich! I tried to help him at some point. But let's put it this way.. It isn't easy to drive a manual car after no practice for 2 years! So eventually, it was decided that Andrew better drive!

Us sprawled over the car.

So we drove and Andrew reached a top speed of 200km/h! It was so fast I had to swallow saliva to pop my ears due to the pressure!

We finally arrived at Munich at close to 2am. After driving around for a while scouting for sleeping places, we decided to settle down in a random carpark by the road to sleep. It was hard to sleep of cos and the cold didn't help! I was so cold i got up in the middle of the night to wear a pair of socks and my jacket properly!Even so, i couldn't feel my toes when i woke up. Check out http://meisjeinholland.blogspot.com/ for photos of us trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in!

So after a few hours of barely sleeping, we set off for Oktoberfest. We arrived at the recommended tent after at about 9am but we couldn't get in anymore! So we ended up having to queue for close to 4 hours squashed like sardines. What's worse is that we're so short it was even hard for us to get some fresh air. Just check this picture out:
We didn't even need to stand! We were so squashed I actually fell asleep while queuing!

After close to 4 hours, we were about to give up when the doors were pushed open and we just squeezed like barbarians in! We were simply estatic to get in! And the atmostphere inside is the most amazing thing!! Just imagine 1500 people partying together! The 4 hours was totally worth it!
We managed to sneak upstairs to the reservation area and a group of germans kindly adopted us into their table! ;)

Hungry and thirsty, we ordered 4 beers, pork knuckles, sausages and grilled chicken. The pork knuckles and the chicken were fantastic but the sausages were quite disappointing! The beer cups are simply worth the mention as they were HUGE. Like 1litre!
Pork knuckles!

Chicken!

Sausages!

Jo and i with the huge glass of beer!

Apart from eating and drinking, there was this thing that they sniffed there. It looks like coke but it's not and i dunno what it is exactly. But it shoots straight up to your head. One guy at the hostel told me he had so much of that that his nose bled!
Cake's expression after sniffin!

Andrew sniffing!

And Andrew's expression after trying!

We stayed inside for about 4 hours and because the rest of the Singaporeans couldn't get in and we had enough of partying, we left to meet them. I was honestly still high and that high lasted for another few more hours! I was walking out of Oktoberfest with my eyes almost closed. When we finally found the rest of the Singaporeans, we just wandered about it town and took pictures for a while!
Borrowed one of the Oktoberfest hats from Kenneth that i eventually bought for 15 euros later on! Which is SUCH a waste of money! But oh well, it's a souvenir from the fest after all, since i didn't smuggle the glass out!

Wearing lionel's lion hat! I dunno what was jo trying to do!

Melvin and kenneth trying to take a photo with their hats lighted up. But kenneth's one was faulty so it didn't work!

Finally suceeded after umpteen tries!

After that, we all went for dinner at a cosy italian restaurant and then thankfully managed to bunk in with Melvin's 3 friends in their hostel on sleeping bags! I was so tired i snored in the night!! How embarrassing!! Dingsheng said he could even hear me with his ear plugs and it was like a symphony!!! :S For the record, I dun usually snore!!!!!! Ok.. Unless i'm really tired. But then it's usually just really deep breathing.. Oh man...

The next day, we got up early, had a fantastic breakfast at a random cafe near a petrol station and then went to the Dachou Concentration Camp. And as we were told, it was a place visiting but it was definitely not a nice sight! I was so affected by the things that I read and the pictures and the videos that I saw. The prisoners were so tortured. They were skin and bones. And when they died, they were stripped of their clothes and thrown in a pile. Some of them were even used as subjects for scientific experiments like hypothermia, surviving on salt water and using electricity to create a bubble in the brain that will burse causing death. When they were sick and unable to work, they would be murdered in groups of 20s using lethal injections. It was just so cruel. We also saw the gas chamber that many were killed in. After a while, I felt so sick i felt like vomitting! It was a very educational but a very disturbing experience...
Us at the entrance of the concentration camp.


Plaques to remind of the cruelty of the acts and never again should it happen.

Guard tower where the guards would shoot the prisoners from if they set foot on the grass patch just below it. The sick thing is that guards got a monetary award for each kill. So some of them would deliberately lead the prisoners onto the patch. In other cases, the torture was so great that prisoners would just run onto the patch to end their misery.

The colours of the leaves on the trees were really pretty. But yet there was a feeling of melancholy to the picture..

The bunks that the prisoners slept in. It's reconstructed but it still gives an idea of how bad living conditions were.

The crematorium where they burnt the dead bodies. After a coal shortage however, they just threw all the dead bodies into a truck and drove off to dump them somewhere.

The gas chamber. The outlets at the top were "fake showers" to create the false impression to the prisoners then that they were going to get a shower when they were actually going to be killed.

The sanitisation chambers. Before the prisoners were led into the gas chamber to die, they had to leave their clothes in the waiting room. Because of the shortage of clothes, these prisoners clothes were sanitised in these rooms and given to the new prisoners.

Sculpture to remember the prisoners in the concentration camp.. It's supposed to look like men in thorns..

Yikes.. Blogging about the concentration camp even makes me sick... :(

Lastly,
Crappy meal for 5.25 euros. Didn't even taste good! But we were so hungry on the highway on the way back we just had to fill our tummies!

That's all for Oktoberfest and Munich. There were too many happenings and it's hard to blog and post photos everything. There was this cute guy at Oktoberfest that the Germans we were with wanted to pair with Jo. And this guy who kissed all of us! Including Andrew. More more details on Oktoberfest, check ou Cake's blog: http://meisjeinholland.blogspot.com/ and Jo's blog: http://jojo-binks.blogspot.com/!

posted by just me @ 3:41 AM