I woke up at 6 o’clock at a Dutch movie producer and started walking towards the central station. It was pitch black and raining, water coming up from the thousand canals. Tons of spiders. But
I woke up at 6 o’clock at a Dutch movie producer and started walking towards the central station. It was pitch black and raining, water coming up from the thousand canals. Tons of spiders.
But once on the train, everything got a lot better. Thanks to these Sinterklaas kruidchocosomething. Sinterklaas is celebrated instead of Christmas on December 5, which is part of the secret Dutch plan of not being German at all. And the shops are already full of the candy. Netherlands.
Just like when the activists started joining the train in Eindhoven, we got our first overt oktoberfesters in Utrecht already. Here is a group of guys from Mannheim.
There were lots of policemen with huge weapons at München central station. I thought there were terrorists on our train, but then I realized that it was us that was the problem: the Oktoberfesters. One guy was puking at the station, and all the lockers were taken, with greedy tourists waiting for someone to take out their luggage so that they could leave theirs. I started walking.
Finding the Oktoberfest was super-easy. It was written in the floors of the central station, and then you just followed the signs. You could be as drunk as hell and still find it. More and more people joined the trail. In the end I was part of a huge mass of people moving slowly forward. It was like you couldn’t go left or right, but only forward. I felt extra burdened by my backpack and started feeling like an extra stupid tourist. Then suddenly there was an escalator leading us down, while people also came up. I thought they were checking tickets in the basement or what?
Then I realized that I had just followed the trail down to the subway station. D’oh!
In mild panic, I turned myself away from the crowd and found this sticker. A good old demonstration would have been a lot better! Where you are walking just for the sake of it, and not to get a beer that never comes. By now I was so tired of all the walking that I decided to do what my friends said, and just have a 2 € beer outside the area rather than a 12 € beer on the inside. So I walked and walked until I saw what looked like a beer tent. But it turned out to be a luggage tent! 11 € for my bags. I felt so relieved. And here is what the Oktoberfest area looked like:
It’s a huge amusement park. Lots of food sold everywhere.
But no beer. Beer is only sold inside the tents. There were, however, no bartenders. You had to choose a table to sit down at. But I had no idea how the system worked – if each table had a bill or if people paid directly. For an hour I walked around and tried to find just a bar, a table, or just a bench for some surfing, or someone who’d answer my questions.
Eventually I started hallucinating. Looking at all uniformly dressed up Germans made me think that I was in an alternative future. Like Hitler had nuked the US and we’re now under the patriotic governance of his son Funkler, currently celebrating goods coming in from all the subordinate provinces.
I’m sorry for those hallucinations. I definitely needed help. So I walked into a garden, went to some guys and said “Please, I’m from Sweden, I don’t understand how this system works. Can you be my friends?” And they said “Of course, welcome!”. It works like this: you sit down at a table. Every table has their private waiter. He gives you a litre of beer and you pay 12 euros. So simple!
We had a fantastic time. One guy was so sad for having to leave that day. He was shaking from having drunk beer for a whole week. He had to go back to Spain where he lived after meeting a woman on Cyprus. He talked about the white clouds on the blue sky which gave everything the colours of München. I asked for his best memories from this week and he tried to explain that he really didn’t have memories, it was just one nice feeling of have being drunk in München the whole time.
Then I sat down with a French and a German. The French wanted to get married while the German talked about getting blowjobs every week from Turkish women who wanted to marry someone in München.
Then I ended up with a drunk Finn, which is one of the qualities I have as a Swede. His jacket was stolen though, and he really wanted to beat someone up and it wasn’t me, so he left.
Then I was adopted by a German-Iranian-Chinese München family who gave me beer. The Iranian was a bit sad for me not planning to go to Iran, while his girlfriend claimed that all of the Middle-East was great to travel to. I told the Chinese in Chinese what I thought about Xi Jinping, but she didn’t react, which could have been my prunanziashon. The dad was a math teacher, and I used to teach math as voluntary homework help, and I love it. Then my friend Lissy showed up, who is also a math teacher. So we talked a lot about that. I’m always using money examples. Kids don’t know math, but they know everything about money. When the context is them winning or losing something, they understand it all perfectly. Rich kids think about money. Poor kids think about money. They should all have 1000 USD/month.
Then Lissy and I did two roller coasters, of which one was shaped as five O’s, like the Olympic symbol. That was the most Olympic thing I had done in my life. Sooooo nice. Then we did a very weird old amusement ride that I don’t even have the English words to describe, but it’s called a “Toboggan” and is from 1933, and starts with an eight meter upwards belt on which you have to stand and hold your balance while it moves you forward and upward at an amazing speed. I stumbled like hell and got some help from the young men. And after that, a lovely ride down in a slide.
Then it was time for what I was longing for just six hours ago: 2 euro beers at a München street corner. Then Lissy followed me to the night train, which was good, because the city kept confusing me. In very nice ways. I went to bed and fell asleep directly.
