Oktoberfest!!

Hello again!

Teaching last week went very well. Late last week I finally got a "Stundenplan," which is my fixed (more or less) teaching schedule. That have given me a lot of flexibility in terms of how I manage my time on weekdays. Other than that, there is nothing too exciting to report on the teaching front. I have found that I am learning just about as much as the students while I am at school, which makes for interesting days. Also - my colleagues are all very nice and funny, and make my days easy.

After a not-so-long week of teaching (I'm only required to teach 12 hours a week), I made the 5.5 hour train ride down to Munich to take part in Oktoberfest!

I met up with two other Fulbrighter's, Alex and Ashley (both friends from Orientation), and we enjoyed 2 days worth of Oktoberfest. Ashley also had a friend visiting at the time, named David, who is coincidentally from the state of Oregon. It was nice to talk to someone from my neck of the woods.

The 4 of us had an incredible time throughout the entire weekend! We met on Friday afternoon and pretty much headed straight for the festivities. After walking around and checking the scene out, we were lucky enough to find 4 spots at a table in the beer garden outside of a tent (they aren't really tents, but rather big buildings that fit hundreds of people). After waiting a little too long for some service (we were fortunate enough to pick a table that was smack-dab in between two different servers, so they rarely came to our table), we bought 4 huge 1-liter mugs of beer (in german it is called a Mass, pronounced kind of like moss - the stuff that grows) and had a good time.

Oktoberfest can be likened to the Disneyland for adults who enjoy beer and eating. Like Disneyland does for children, Oktoberfest offers a man or woman everything they could desire in terms of tasty drinks and delicious eats. And everyone you see is there for essentially the same reason (drink beer, have fun), so it ends up being a great time no matter where you end up.

Another thing I really enjoyed about Oktoberfest is how many different kinds of people I met. I met people from Canada, the States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Germany (of course), and just about every neighboring country in Europe. It was a very eclectic atmosphere, which led to some pretty funny scenes because ever so often small groups would break out with drinking songs from their respective countries.

Unfortunately, the biggest jerk we ran into during our time at Oktoberfest was a German dude named Lucas. Lucas was at our table on our first night (Friday). Once he found out that we were from the States, he began rediculing us over this and that (his main focus was bashing on our government and the american people in general). Now obviously, being from America, I have heard from pretty nasty things said about my country, and I can deal with most because, unfortunately, some are kind of true. However, Lucas didn't know what he was talking about (probably too drunk to understand his own words) and eventually crossed the line. Once he realized that me or one of the other two guys with me were about to punch him in his kisser, he went straight into "apology-mode." From then on he had nothing but nice things to say, strange huh.

Anyways, Lucas could do nothing at all to ruin our fun, as we all agreed on Sunday that the past weekend was one of the best times of our lives! Okay, here are some pictures from the weekend:

From right to left: Me, David, and Ashley on the first night.

The Mass!

Alex and I toasting the second day's first Mass.

One of my favorite pictures of the weekend.

You can see how excited I was to find this guy and get a picture with him. I made sure to thank him plenty for his cooperation.

That's all I have for now. Thanks again for reading my blog. I hope that by reading this you are able to get a better picture of my travels throughout Germany.

yours,

Russ "I'm really glad I get paid in Euros" Wacker