Friday, 16 September 2011
Every part of Munchen demonstrated the term ‘German efficiency’. Everything seemed to have that discipline, like the whole place would just clean itself. The weather was glorious. I ate a currywurst for breakfast. It was good but could be better by eating a lot more.
My German was pretty bad. I tried to learn it for 1 year, a decade ago. The difficulty of travelling without knowledge of the local lingo was clear. As I recalled how I got by most foreign countries through pointing at food or random menu options. My luck in that had been great in the sense that the worst food I had on my travels was the meal that gave me food poisoning but I was pretty sure that I did not order that. Then closely followed by the mongolian pastry with lamb lard, that got me, got me good.
Germany was about the beer. Beer halls, beer garden and the Oktoberfest, which was like a beer festival. They must have been pretty drunk to hold this festival in September. Out of all the festivals planned, this was the most exciting one and we arrived to Munchen as planned.
Beer Hall looked quite intimidating. Perhaps, just not knowing the etiquette was putting me off. There was a lot of noise, we settled on a relatively quieter street side beer for our daily beer.
A beer garden in the interestingly named “The English Garden” with an oriental structure. Must be the drunk again when creating this park. It was a really nice park until a continental man exposed himself, just so not British. Crazy continental Europeans nudist….
For the night in Munchen, we checked into Wien’s Camp (Party Camp), apparently where the party was at. I never felt so old or out of place before. I never thought I was ever ‘into’ that anyway. The tent was spacious, apparently you can fit 4 people into it. Again bromantically speaking, its all good as long as there is no touching.
The ground was so cold, and without a sleeping mat, or sleeping bag, it was freaking freezing. The travel light with no sleeping bag decision was a bad one in the end. I was wearing a jacket, hoodie, 2 x t-shirts (one clean and one not so clean) and two pair of trousers, again one clean and one not so clean. I slept on my left arm to keep my core body away from the ground. It took me a lot time to regain some circulation there in the morning. Sorry buddy you weren’t born on the right side. I will never sleep in a tent without a sleeping bag again.
Adventures of Delboy 