Day 25: September 26-27, 2015 –
When the alarm went off at 4:00 in the morning, I woke up right away, because I had barely slept. We got dressed and put our packs on, then headed down the stairs. The night before, we had asked about whether the landlord minded, if they had a dog or that they were renting out the apartment. They said, “I can’t imagine that he would, because the tenants on the first floor are running a brothel.” We thought this had to be a fabrication, but sure enough as we were exiting the building at 4am, we saw one of the girls of the night, walking out of one of the rooms on the first floor. The tram stop was virtually right outside the building and even though I questioned whether the tram would even run that early in the morning, there was a young man, drunk, and leaning against the bus stop sign.
When we boarded the tram, it was clear that while we had slept at least part of the night, this train full of intoxicated individuals, who were heading home from their night of escapades. There was even two young, nerdy guys hitting on a traveler like ourselves, using what little English, they knew to convince her, that they should be her guide. While she kept saying, “But I am leaving later today to go to Florence.” “We’ll come with you!” They would say. Two true, international men of mystery.
We got to the station, “airport early” for our train, but not long after we arrived, there was already a track listed on the big board for our trip. This train was eventually going to Hamburg, but not without dropping us off in Munich. We got on the train, found our seats, and all we wanted to do was catch some shut eye for a few hours, before we arrived at Oktoberfest. Sadly, our moments of silence ended prematurely. Each stop that followed, brought on more and more people, and the train car started to resemble the scene near the end of Trading Places. Most of the girls were dressed like Jamie Lee Curtis in lederhosen, or in a drindl.
Most of the people getting on the train were younger than us and starting Oktoberfest early, with some beers for the road. We still tried to sleep for a majority of the 6 hour train ride, but in the end, we had to wake up. I once again went to the bar car to get Elizabeth a coffee. This time, I got myself a liter of beer to start my Oktoberfest early as well, and numb any burns that may occur along the way. When I arrived back at my seat and sat down, Elizabeth had pulled out the absinthe, we had bought at a liquor store in Prague near the Mucha Museum. She dared me to take a swig. It was a pretty harsh shot of 80% alcohol, which tasted like a cross between Goldschlager and Jagermeister. Between the beer and the absinthe, I was awake, but my brain was definitely in a mellow state. When we arrived in Munich, I was so out of it, that I was just sort of, going through the motions and letting Elizabeth lead the way.
We wanted to see some of the castles in Germany and maybe make it to the top of the Zugspitze (the highest point in Germany), so we rented a car. Once again, the same old thing, we arrived at a train station, ended up getting lost, and wasting a few hours, that could been have spent doing something else. Although this time, I was super buzzed and not annoyed by the fact that we couldn’t find the rental car office. All I knew was that I was really hungry and needed something to eat. There was a kiosk in the station, that was selling big, gingerbread cookies, that were shaped like a heart, that men are supposed to give to their sweethearts. I was so hungry that instead of buying one for Elizabeth, I bought one for myself and only gave her a few bites.
It took some time, but after walking around the train station twice, we finally found the rental car office, on the second floor, hidden in a secret corner. Elizabeth filled out the paper work and rented the car, then we walked to the garage. The car that we rented was a Fiat 500 XL. It was backed into the spot, but Elizabeth couldn’t figure, how she would shift the manual transmission into reverse, when she needed to. She drove to the bottom of the spiral ramp, then out of the garage, and parked the car. Elizabeth ran to the gentleman, who was washing the rental cars, and he came over to show us the stick shift reverse trick. He also switched the navigation from German to English and set the destination to Füssen, where we would see the closest castle.
Now that we had a car, one of the major things on our agenda, besides going to the castles, was to buy lederhosen and a dirndl. We drove in circles around Munich looking for a shop, but everywhere we looked were stores selling everything, but lederhosen. We decided to give up for the moment and Elizabeth drove us onto the highway. Then, we instantly saw a billboard for a shop called Angermeister. Everyone on the billboard was wearing Oktoberfest garb, so we figure that had to be the place to go to get our clothes.
Elizabeth pulled off at the next exit and we tried to find it. She was spun around and we didn’t even really know the name of the store at the time, so it might have been another lost cause. We put in what we thought was the name into the car’s GPS navigation system and 15 minutes later, we arrived.
For such an impressive store, they had absolutely no parking lot. Elizabeth dropped me off at the curb and told me to go in and see if I could find anything. The store was incredible. I thought I would only be running in for a minute, but surprisingly there was a gentleman at the door pouring free beer from a tap. I went up the stairs, to where the men’s clothes were located and started to look at the racks. These weren’t poorly made costumes, real leather, beautifully designed pants, with fancy embroidery. At first, I didn’t look at the prices, only the sizes. The sizes were in centimeters, so I didn’t know if I was going to be a 50, 75, or 100.I turned the tag over on one of the pairs and the price said € 1,199. I practically had a heart attack! $1200 for a pair of pants! I went over to the clerk to ask him what size, he thought that I was. He looked at me and just asked, “How much do you want to spend € 500? € 1000? Maybe you should look at the discount rack?”
I went over to the discount rack, still not having any idea about the sizes, and found the cheapest pair of shorts was € 169. I looked over the shirts and they were € 70. I was floored. There was no way that I could bring myself to pay close to $300 for a shirt and a pair of pants. I rushed back down the steps and hoped that Elizabeth was close by. I went to the curb, but I didn’t see her swinging around to pick me up. I figured that she would come around again eventually or maybe she found a parking spot. I went around the corner to see if there was an alternate shop selling similar items.
I saw a sign for a second hand store and I thought that there might be a pair of lederhosen inside that fit me perfectly. I walked in and it was a typical antique/second hand shop, filled with old furniture, candlesticks, and other junk. Straight ahead, there was a Bavarian style hat, like the one that I saw in Vienna! I figured, if I wasn’t going to be able to buy my lederhosen, I was at least going to buy a hat. I asked the elderly woman the cost, and said “€ 15”. I asked her if she would take a credit card and she shook her head no. I walked out with my head down, and decided that I should go back to see, if I could find Elizabeth. After a few steps, I stopped and reached in my pocket. I counted the coins that I had, and somehow I ended up with € 16. I turned around and I went back in the shop and bought the hat. I was Bavarian now, if only in the hat.
I walked back around the corner and Elizabeth was standing there with her, “Where were you?” face. I showed her my hat and told her about my traumatizing experience in the Angermeister. She agreed that the prices were crazy high for us, then we walked back to the rental car.
We were close to the highway on ramp, so finally, Elizabeth was going to have her first drive on the Autobahn. It was a 90 minute ride to Füssen. The terrain started off really flat, but as we got closer to the Alps, we were driving through mountains and valleys. Elizabeth was starting to get stressed and upset about not having the exact directions to the castle programmed into the GPS, but I assured her that we weren’t going to miss a giant castle built on the side of a mountain. This is where things got frustrating as a passenger while riding with her. I can guide her within 10 feet of a destination, but she gets pissed at me, if the GPS doesn’t bring her within an inch of the final stop.
We followed the signs that matched with the GPS and instead of believing the signs, Elizabeth insisted on stopping at a fancy hotel and asking the desk clerk where the castle was. Basically as expected, she said, “Follow the signs.” We followed the signs for about a quarter of a mile, then there was the castle, high up on the mountain.
We arrived at a parking lot in the small congested area, that only existed to service tourists who were visiting the castle. The parking fee was € 6, but there weren’t any other options that we could see. After we parked in the gravel lot, we walked down the road to the castle’s visitor’s center, which had a big sign that said “TICKETS”. It was around 4:00pm, when we walked in and the people inside said, “The visitor’s center is closing and all of tours of the castle are booked for the rest of the evening, but you can walk around the castle for free.”
We saw that there was a bus stop a few feet down the road and a line of people squeezing into the bus. It was pretty obvious, that we weren’t going to be getting on this particular bus, based on this line. There was a little snack bar next to the bus stop, with picnic tables, and since we were feeling a little hungry, we walked over to see what they had to eat. This concession stand was really limited in it’s choices, like at a little league baseball game or a high school football game.
They had ice cream bars, flat bread pizzas, soda, and sausages. There were a few items that weren’t on their regular menu, but where written on a chalkboard. Elizabeth chose one which said, “Veggie Pizza ________”. When Elizabeth ordered it, the guy working the stand said, that it wasn’t actually pizza, but something else. I wasn’t sure what to order, but ended up buying a wrapped ice cream cone and a “Bavarian red sausage sandwich”. I had eaten Weiss sausage in Hamburg, so I imagined that “red sausage” might be more like a bratwurst.
Elizabeth and I shared the ice cream cone, which is what you do when you get something that you and your vegetarian wife can both enjoy. We waited for our food and watched as 15 minutes later a new bus arrived. We kept looking over at the concession stand to see what the deal was with our food. The teenager running the stand looked spaced out, and just sort of stared back at us blankly. Just before the bus was about to leave, we went over to him and ask him, where our food was.
“What did you have again?” he said. “Red sausage and a Veggie Pizza thing.” I said. “Oh, right, right, I forgot.” he slowly replied. “We need to get on that bus and it’s getting late, how long is it going to take to make it?” We said. “Oh, we are closing soon, maybe…” He said. “…We can get our money back,” we finished. “Yeah, yeah.” He said. “I can give you the sausage now and give you money for the rest.” He said. “That’s fine.” We agreed. He gave us our money back, while an older lady put a pair of tongs into a boiling pot and pulled out two hot dogs, that were strung together. As soon as she put them on a hamburger bun and handed it to me, the next bus pulled away.
It was getting to be close to 4:30, and we didn’t know how many buses were going to be available before the castle closed. So here we were, Elizabeth with nothing to eat and me with two hot dogs in a hamburger bun. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against people that like hot dogs, but over the years, I have definitely lost my taste for them. After you have spent most of your adult life eating delicious spicy sausages, it’s hard to go back to eating processed meat like foods. If you are in Füssen to look at the Neuschwanstein Castle, which inspired the Cinderella castle in the Disney Universe, and you see “red sausage” on the menu, know that you are getting a plain, low grade, hot dog, and not a delicious bratwurst. I took a few bites of the meat-like link, because I didn’t want the food to be completely wasted, but it was totally gross. I threw the hotdogs away and gave the bun to some birds that were hopping around our feet.
We stood at the front of the turnstile, where the bus was picking up riders and we waited. An Indian family, who told us that they worked in the Bollywood film industry, cut in front of us in line, but then started talking to us about their work and their lives, and how they used to live in California, as well. Out of the woodwork came 30 or 40 Chinese people, who all thought that they were supposed to be first in line for everything. They all tried to stand in front of us, in the turnstyle by going in through the exit. A bus started to arrive and we were pushed to the side. It looked like that bus was going out of service, because it backed into a driveway near by.
Elizabeth was not in the mood to take shit from people, and she started guiding the Chinese people into the line behind us filling in the turn style. A few people lined up behind us, then a minute later, they all got into their own line, and started walking up the side of the mountain using the service road. If this bus wasn’t going to take them to the top, then they were going to walk.
Out of nowhere, a group of middle eastern people arrived and lined up behind us, complete with turbans, burkas, and hijabs. Finally, another bus arrived and we all packed in, as many as we could fit into the shuttle bus. Up the winding road, we went as the driver took hairpin turns with ease. At the top of the road, the bus driver told us that the path to the castle was down a steep hill, and that the last bus was arriving in 20 minutes.
We headed down the hill, passing the elderly tourists, stopping at the viewpoints to take photos, and enjoying the view of the town below. Up and down, we followed the paved trail through the woods until we finally saw the castle towering over us. It was significantly larger than it looked from below, and even though it has some resemblance to the castle in Disney World, it is 10 times as big. We took lots of photos and rushed to get to the courtyard beyond the large, castle, doors. Seconds after we walked in and joined a crowd of curious people, the guard started yelling at everyone in German, SS style. It’s clear to see how Germany practically took over the world, because just the sound of their voice, when they are pissed makes you feel like you are about to get killed. Elizabeth and I backed off, along with a few others, but there were people still walking up the ramp, who were going to feel this guy’s wrath.
We admired the castle and the view below, which included a yellow castle, which we only saw from a distance. The castle looks like it came from a medieval fairy tale land, but in reality, it was actually built in the late 1800’s. If you figure that you are the richest guy around, why wouldn’t you build two castles, on the sides of a mountain overlooking this valley. It was sort of tough to get to, but if you had everything delivered, then why not?
We thought we only had a few minutes until the last bus was leaving, so we hustled back up the hill and down the path. Just as we arrived at the stop, the bus pulled away. We had missed it. People started to gather and discuss how they were going to get back down the hill. That was supposed to be the last bus. It was passed the time that the driver said the bus would run, so I was sure that we were screwed. I wondered, how are all these old timers were going to get down this mountain?
I was pessimistic that we were going to see another bus tonight, so I convinced Elizabeth to just walk down the footpath. However, just as we started walking down the mountain, a bus came to our rescue. Everyone at the stop pushed and shoved to get on the bus, until everyone on the mountain was tightly packed into this sardine can of a bus. Down the winding road and around the hairpin turns we went until we got back to the concession stand building. The sky grew darker as we walked back to the parking lot and the rental car.
On our way back to Munich, we stopped at the only grocery for a hundred miles, based on the number of people inside. I picked out a few snacks and drinks to tide us over for a bit, before we arrived back in Munich and could get a more balanced meal. It was about 90 minutes, before we arrived back in the city limits.
Even though, it was only around 8:00 pm, it seemed like people were leaving the Oktoberfest in droves. We were staying a hostel that was a block away from the Oktoberfest, to avoid driving through a big mess, but I guess that we forgot that we had to get there first. There were people everywhere and with the roads blocked off, it took us an hour just to find a parking spot.
Elizabeth stopped in a loading zone and dropped me off in front of the hostel. I ran inside to check in at the front desk, while she waited with the car, so that I could find out if they had a designated parking lot for their guests. I walked in the front door and the biggest nerd in Munich was standing behind the desk. He checked us in and gave me the keys, and when I asked him about the parking situation, he alerted me that the parking lot was full. He told us that we might find some parking on the street or in a garage, but we could try parking at the hostel tomorrow. Finding parking on the street was going to be easier said than done. We basically spent the next hour driving in circles and dodging drunk people. We finally decided that we would park in the next garage that we saw. Surprisingly, we found a garage that was empty, where we could park overnight. Unfortunately, the cost to park was going to be € 25.
We parked the car and condensed all of our essential items into my small back pack. As we came out of the garage, we joined the biggest party in the world. As we walked back towards the hostel, we could see that right along the main strip, there were shops with lederhosen, souvenirs, and drinks. I was so anxious to get my costume, that we quickly stopped into one of the shops to check the prices. For the pants, the cost was € 100 and for the shirt it was € 20. Together the cost was going to be half as much as the other store we went to.
The shopkeeper was a pro, he looked at me and knew exactly what size would fit me. A gentleman came into the store just then, and asked about the leather shorts. The shopkeeper told him, they cost € 99. The gentleman tried to talk him down, saying that the going rate was € 69. The shopkeeper didn’t budge, and moments later, the gentleman walked out with a new pair of shorts.
I went to the dressing room and put on the shirt and pants. Perfect fit! I asked, if he would take credit card, and like the rest of Europe, he didn’t. I told him that I needed to go to an ATM and come back. He said that he was closing in 10 minutes and was going to be closed the next day. I told him that I would run down to the ATM and be right back. Elizabeth and I went to the next shop about a block down the street. It was almost exclusively dresses, but they had some shelves with pants and shorts. I asked what their cost was and just like at Angermeister, the shorts were € 169. In spite of what the gentleman in the previous shop claimed, clearly the old man shopkeeper was running the best deal in town.
While Elizabeth was finding the perfect dress, I ran to the ATM. I withdrew a stack of money, and then ran to the shop. As I walked in the door, the assistant told me that the store was closed. I told her that I told the gentleman that I needed to go to the bank, then come back with cash. She told me that he stepped out and would be right back. When he entered the room, I told him that I had the money and wanted to buy the clothes to wear out that night. He said “Take off your pants, we’ll get you ready right now.” He amended his decision on my pant size from 50 to 54, citing that I needed them a little big, so that I would be able to wear them forever. He handed me a shirt, then some special Oktoberfest socks, and for € 130, I was ready to roll.
I went down to the shop that Elizabeth was browsing in and she was still trying on dresses to find the best one. I think that by then she had decided, but since the doors were locked, I couldn’t get in to pay. This store only accepted cash as well. Even though, I had just enough cash to cover the cost, they shuffled her out and told her to come back in the morning. She was still dressed inher comfy clothes from earlier in the day and she wanted to change into something else, if we were going out.
When we arrived at the hostel, we went upstairs to our pimped out room. We dropped more money on this place, than almost all of the other places on our trip, so we were pleased when we were greeted with bright white walls and a clean private bathroom. Elizabeth got changed into the clothes, we had packed into my back pack, then we went back out. I was excited that I was able to wear my lederhosen, even though Elizabeth was in plain clothes. I really felt like I was part of the party, because it seemed like everyone in Munich was wearing the traditional clothes.
Elizabeth was hungry, so we walked down the street to look for a place that served vegetarian food. A few blocks away we found a popular kebab shop. She was able to order a falafel sandwich. I ordered my first Oktoberfest beer to sort of grease the wheels. We walked down the street to try to find a cool bar to go in, but we weren’t really able to find something that was really for us. We walked past a hip hop club and an private club with a DJ, which we found was for hotel guests only. Where was the place with the Oktoberfest vibe and a polka band? We ended up settling on a bar that was playing 80’s music. As we looked around, we didn’t see any women except for Elizabeth. Somehow, we might have ended up in a gay bar. We ordered a few .5 liters of beer, then decided to spread our money out and go to a different place.
The next place that we ended up going to was the Fleming Hotel bar. It was super mellow, had no music playing, and seemed a little snooty, but it was supposed to have free wifi. We both got a beer, but unfortunately the free wifi was only for the guests. We chilled there for awhile, but because there wasn’t much entertainment, we started to get bored. After our drinks, we just went back to the hostel, and watched a little tv, before crashing out for the night.
Day 26: Oktoberfest
The next morning was Oktoberfest morning. It was the morning that I had been waiting for the entire trip. We had to move the car, buy Elizabeth’s dress, and then head over to the Oktoberfest. We wanted to get there early enough to get a seat at a table in one of the big tents. We stopped in the hostel lobby first, to ask them if there were parking spots available. They said that there were a few spaces, so we asked them if they would let us in the gate, to park our car into their parking lot. The cost to park was $15, which needed to be paid in cash, and someone had to help us because, we needed to put the car in an elevator…An elevator? Yeah, a weird elevator which takes cars underground, which I’ve never seen before. I guess that the Germans have thought of everything!
While walking back through the lobby, Elizabeth poured herself some coffee from the little hostel buffet. I assumed that everything was complimentary, so I made a sandwich and grabbed a hard boiled egg. Out of nowhere, a lady comes up to me and asks me for my token. “Tokken?” I said. “Yes, it’s € 7 for breakfast.” I looked at Elizabeth and was confused as to why she was stealing coffee. The lady gave us the long stare, as I stood frozen and Elizabeth paid her for the egg and sandwich. We started walking to the parking garage as I ate my make shift breakfast.
We walked down the exit ramp of the garage and noticed that someone had run over one of the posts, next to the unattended gate. Elizabeth said, “I wonder if I can fit the car through there, and then we don’t have to pay for parking.” I wasn’t quite sure, if we should test the karma of the parking gods, on our special Oktoberfest day, and suggested that we just pay the € 20 . Uncharacteristically, Elizabeth was determined to try to fit the Fiat between the wall of the garage and the edge of the gate.
Even though, I disapproved, I got out of the car and helped her guide it through. She was, in fact, successful, so we were able to get away with not paying the € 20 parking fee. Elizabeth was feeling proud, but I knew inside that it couldn’t be that easy. Somehow in the future, we were going to have to pay for our crimes, and little did I know that it would be happening a few minutes later.
We drove the two blocks back to the hostel and then alerted the front desk person that we wanted to park in the underground lot. A young, blonde girl, with curly hair, who looked barely over 20, took us back to the larger elevator door. I got out of the car and the receptionist guided Elizabeth into the elevator, which was probably only 6 inches wider than the car. The young woman pushed the button to the elevator. As the car went down, we took the steps to the garage level.
This underground garage was like nothing I had ever seen before. Most of the cars were backed into the spaces, which had angled steel ramps, which were the exact width of the car from tire to tire. It was important to pull the car in 100% straight because there were vertical edges on the sides of the ramp to guide the tires forward. Elizabeth got back into the car, with all the confidence in the world. She had just scammed the other parking garage, with her expert maneuverability, so this parking job was going to be easy as cake. I didn’t want her to press her luck, on such a special day for me, so I calmly told her that she needed to be careful that she had to pull the car straight in. She scoffed at the idea and decided that she was going to do it her way, no matter the consequences.
She started the car and drove forward, then attempted to pull into the spot without first lining it up at all. She hit the gas and started driving up the half inch guide on the side of the ramp. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Stop!” I shouted. “Back out!” Surprised that the tires didn’t pop while balancing in such a narrow piece of metal, I watched as she backed out of the space. Once again, I felt the need to interject. “Ok, sweetie. You were driving on the edge. You need to line up the car and pull straight in.” I said.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” she said confidently. I knew that it DID have to be perfect. Knowing that this was going to be disastrous, I cringed a bit at her cockiness. Once again, without adjusting the car to line it up with the ramp, she pulled the car forward at an angle. I shouted for her to stop and back out again, but it was too late. She had driven the car over the edge of the ramp and the wheel became stuck. My brain exploded at the ridiculous predicament that the parking god had put us in.
The right axel was flat against the ramp and if Elizabeth hadn’t put the parking break on, I was sure that the car was going to slide backwards, smashing into the structural beams, that were placed in between the spaces. Knowing the amount of force that it was going to take to lift the car from it’s current position and out of the space, I feared for the worst. I thought it was too risky to try to crank up the car with the jack in the trunk and that a tow truck, a crane or the strongest man in the world was going to need to lift this car out of here with absolute precision. If it was simply left up to us, the car could be damaged beyond repair and cost beyond the coverage of the rental car insurance.
We purchased the insurance with an $800 deductible, but the fact that my credit card limit was only $500 away and my checking account was around stuck at around $50, I knew that with even minor damage to the car was going to fuck up my finances.
I was majorly pissed. Probably more pissed than I had ever been. And definitely at the maximum pissed off-ness that I had been on the entire trip. This trip was monumental. Elizabeth did all that she could to test my patience the entire trip and watched as I became more resilient. I had let her get away with more bullshit, than ever before. Finally, when it felt like she no longer had any respect for my option, a voice in her head said, “Fuck this guy’s input, I am going to park this car anyway that I want. If it gets fucked up, he is just going to have to deal with it!” And that’s when I learned what marriage is all about. A wife can do something that in most cases would get her sued or fired, but if she does it to her husband, she wants a hug.
There have been things in my life that have caused me to exploded in anger, yell, and lecture. I did all that I could, to get it through to her that sometimes she doesn’t know what she is talking about. Sometimes, she doesn’t know what she is doing, no matter how much she wants to be right. I was way beyond that. I was so far beyond angry, I was silent. I internalized everything.
Elizabeth tried to back the car out of the spot, but it was no use. The car couldn’t use the three wheels that were partially lifted off the ground to pull itself up and out. There might also be a sensor that tells the cars computer not to spin the wheels, if one of the wheels isn’t touching the ground, in case someone is teetering on the edge of a cliff. As far as I could tell, the car was stuck. In my head, I screamed silently until I was numb. I was mentally paralyzed.
Elizabeth sent me up to the front desk to get the blonde girl, who working there. I hesitantly went up to her and said that we were having some trouble parking and she eventually can down to the garage to join us. She had no idea what to make of it the situation. She shrugged her shoulders and said that the hostel owner was going to come by later today or tomorrow. The maintenance man would be by tomorrow, as well, and he should be able to get the car unstuck. One thing was definitely clear, and that was, no one was going to help us today.
Elizabeth seemed unfazed and confident as usual that everything would work out. In the big scheme of things, she is usually right because no one died, but that doesn’t mean that doing stuff that only happens in tv shows, shouldn’t make you want to pull your hair out. “Well, let’s go!” she said. I was sick to my stomach and I just wanted to lay down. I felt even worse than the day in Florence; when we were on our way to see the David and the guy in Verona, said that we could no longer sleep on his couch. I didn’t even feel like going to Oktoberfest anymore. How could I have fun and enjoy anything, while knowing that Elizabeth might have destroyed the rental car and didn’t seem to give a shit.
Elizabeth gathered what she needed from the car and we dropped it off in the room. I was still dressed in my lederhosen, which I practically woke up in. We finally started walking to the shop to buy her dress. I was practically a zombie. We walked into the store and the clerk handed her the dress that she had set aside. I handed over the money and barely said a word about the dress. We stopped back up in the room, so that she could change, and I laid on the bed in a near catatonic state. When she was ready to go, I followed her out the door and lurched over to the Oktoberfest grounds.
I was surrounded by cheer and splendor, but the dark cloud in my head prevented me from feeling happy in a place that looked and felt better than I had imagined it. It was fairly commercial, but it still felt like Disneyland with a soul. There were rides, junk food, souvenirs, and people everywhere. It was completely open to the public and you didn’t need tickets, so anyone could come in and at least walk around.
I didn’t know where I was going and I was done making decisions or suggestions. Elizabeth commented on my silence, “You’re just making me feel bad, by not saying anything.” “I don’t have anything to say, I am beyond furious and I am trying to control my temper. I don’t know where we are supposed to go or what we are supposed to do and at this point I don’t really care.” I said calmly.
When Elizabeth gets pissed at me for saying something stupid, like mentioning that I went somewhere with an ex-girlfriend, she answers every question with, “Sure.” So, I felt like maybe since this was a BIG FUCKING DEAL, I would resort to the same. “How about this tent over here?” She asked. “Sure.” I said. There was a big tent for the Hofbrauhaus brewery, so we went walked in the front door. It was magical.
Everyone was happy, singing, and dressed up. People were climbing on tables and chugging liters of beer. Waitresses were whizzing by. I stopped one of the waitresses in her tracks and told her that we just got arrived in Munich and we didn’t know what to do. “Do we just sit down anywhere and then order a beer?” I asked. The waitress told us that she would be right back and walked into the crowd. A few minutes later, she came back and asked us to follow her. He brought us to a table full of German, young men, who had left a few places to sit right on the edge of their benches.
There are 10,000-50,000 seat capacities depending on the tent that you go into. The tents contain rows and rows of 8 foot picnic tables with attached benches lined up as tightly as space will allow. There is an aisle every few tables, so that the waitresses can bring you beer. When we sat down across from each other on the benches, literally back to back with someone from tables next to ours. We ordered a couple of beers in the tall liter mugs and then acquainted ourselves with the people at our table. I can’t remember all of their names, but I think that one of their names was Olaf.
The first person that I met, barely knew any English, but he seemed to smile and talk a lot. A few minutes later, his friend came over and sat next to me, and I had a new drinking buddy. I was still pissed in the back of my mind about the car, but after the first liter of beer, I was just taken over by the place.
The guys, that we were sitting with, were all from Hamburg, and they had taken a road trip down for the weekend. Their range of experiences at the Oktoberfest varied, and while one of the guys had gone close to 10 years in a row, this was a first Oktoberfest for some of the boys. There was one more guy at the table, whom we found out was only 18. He hadn’t come with this bunch of young men, but had met up with them some time earlier in the morning. He said that he was from just outside of Munich and took the train in that morning. He had lost his backpack at some point and left a few times to see if it had been turned in.
All the other guys were drinking, singing and toasting, but the younger guy sort of just sat there and complained. “Where’s your beer?” I asked. “I don’t have one, it’s too expensive. Everything is too expensive here.” He said. But how can you come to Oktoberfest and not have one beer, I wondered.
It was impossible to not get caught up in the magic. Every few minutes the polka band would play a drinking song and everyone would toast. Whether I actually knew the words or not it didn’t matter, it was just amazing to be sitting with some real Germans and drinking beer at Oktoberfest.
Ein Prosit, ein Prosit
Der Gemütlichkeit
Ein Prosit, ein Prosit
Der Gemütlichkeit.
OANS! ZWOA! DREI! G’SUFFA!
Everywhere you looked there was something amazing happening. Two women kissing, a big, fat guy chugging 8 beers in a row all by himself, waitresses running by carrying 8 beers for the whole table. The beers just kept coming. I can’t be sure how many I actually drank, but after I drank half of one of Elizabeth’s beers, it was probably 3 and a half or 4 and a half beers.
There was food being served, which the young guy exclaimed was too expensive. My new brother, who was sitting next to me, assured me that outside the tent, the food was much more expensive. I ordered 2 white sausages (like I had eaten in Hamburg) and one of the huge pretzels, which are bigger than your head. Elizabeth ordered a plate of bread and cheese.
When the sausages arrived, I took a bite and my new brother corrected me, by telling me that I am supposed to take off the casing before I eat it. In the states, I have always ate sausage, skin and all, but they were right; it definitely tasted better without the skin. This also wasn’t the type of sausage that you cut up with a knife and fork. This type of sausage, you eat with your hands and dip in the spicy mustard, where you can still see the seeds, not that yellow, American crap.
Time was passing and people were getting drunker, but still the younger guy hadn’t had a drink. I thought, how can I sit here drinking these massive beers, and here is this guy who thinks that they are too expensive, and isn’t enjoying himself otherwise? So, I bought him a beer. He seemed to be doing okay for awhile. Toasting and drinking. Once the beer had finished, his head was laying on the table. After a while, security tapped him on the shoulder a few times and then they kicked him out.
The guy sitting behind Elizabeth kept accidentally elbowing her, so she wanted to switch seats. So I ended up getting shoved and elbowed for awhile. By this time, my brother sitting next to me had passed out.
I had almost spend all of the € 100 that I withdrew from the ATM, because with a nice tip (because the waitresses didn’t receive a wage, only what they earned in tips) each beer was € 12. Paired with the fact that I was really drunk and my friends had passed out, we decided to leave our table, and take a little walk around Oktoberfest.
After we left the Hofbrau tent, I was on autopilot. Elizabeth must have been way more sober than I was, because she was able to maneuver the festival like a champ. I basically just followed her around and tried not to break anything. I remember walking into a different tent, maybe the Paulander tent, but I can’t really be sure. I smelled cinnamon rolls. At that moment, all that I wanted was a cinnamon roll.
Elizabeth was tired of babysitting me, so we left the Oktoberfest grounds and walked back towards the hostel. Along the way, I ate a doner and rice plate, for the first time, and it was delicious. From the Turkish food shop, we headed up to the hostel room. Once there, I basically just laid on the bed and passed out.
At some point during the day, Elizabeth had lost her phone and was looking through her purse frantically, but she couldn’t find it. I was practically asleep, even though it was so early. The alcohol had gotten to me. I might has well have been falling into a coma. During her search through her purse, she was not satisfied with my lack of concern, due to my drunkenness. The fact that she loses a phone like every other month, also lead to me not being surprised that she lost one more, and she started yelling at me. I had just about enough of that sort of talk for the trip, so I got out of bed, put on regular clothes and drunkenly stumbled back to Oktoberfest.
I felt like I was looking through a steadycam shot a drunk person and not like I was actually controlling where I was walking. I retraced our previous steps and went back into the Hofbrau tent to the table where we were sitting. There was a whole different crowd from who we were sitting with before, and I couldn’t find her phone hiding anywhere.
Convinced that I did my duty for the day, I stumbled back to the hostel. Looking back, it’s really a shame that she lost the phone, because all of the photographs that she had taken to document the trip were stored on her phone. She hopefully had the phone hooked up to her google account and had been uploading photos to the cloud, but if not, it’s a lot of memories lost. When I got back to the hostel and climbed the steps, that was it. I was out.
I woke up again at some point, because Elizabeth was playing the tv too loud, but I pretty much slept until the morning. Elizabeth at one point had walked back to the Oktoberfest to look for her phone. She said that, she went to lost and found, but didn’t have any luck finding it. The next thing that I remember was waking up the next morning and taking a shower.
Even though, I was still halfway between drunk and hung over, I knew that the car was still teetering on the brink of destruction in the parking garage below. Elizabeth found out from the front desk, that the maintenance man was due in at 10am; so we still had some time for some breakfast before watching an act of God take place in the retrieval of the rental car. We walked across the street to a coffee shop that also sold pastries and we each ordered the cinnamon rolls that we had been craving the day before. Even though, it was getting close to 9am, the streets were practically empty compared to the Oktoberfest crowd the day before. We did see a hand full of people dressed in lederhosen, but there was a good chance that Monday was going to be a much slower day at the event.
We walk back across the road to the hostel and waited for the maintenance man to arrive. There was a young black man with dreadlocks behind the desk who was humoring us during our struggle and would end up letting us know when the maintenance man arrived. He told us that something like this happened a few weeks ago, and the car got out fine. I was pretty skeptical that this exact thing happened, but it gave Elizabeth the false sense of hope that she needed, to feel like she hadn’t done anything wrong. No matter how much she screws up on something, someone is going to be there to bail her out. The brunt of my anger had subsided, however and I had accepted that we might be totally fucked. I knew that if we prayed really hard, it was possible to get the car’s wheel up the 12 inches, in order to be even with the top of the ramp.
A little after 10am, an older man in a blue jumpsuit showed up and asked us if we had a jack. We told him that there was probably one in the car and we took him down to the garage to take a look. We walked down the steps and took him over to the car. He looked over at me and rubbed his forehead, then with his eyes, he said, “What the fuck did you do?” The young man with the dreadlocks was still hanging around, and since the guy in the jumpsuit didn’t really speak English, the dreadlocks guy was our translator. The guy in the jumpsuit knew that the job, that he had ahead of him, was not going to be an easy one, but he still said, “Kein problem”. We followed him back up the stairs to his tool closet, where he pulled out a screw driver, a magnetic flashlight, and some planks of wood.
We helped him carry the wood down the steps, but that was going to be the extent of our assistance. From here, I was going to step back and find out what fate had in store for the car, from the sidelines. Elizabeth got the jack out of the trunk and handed it to the guy in the jumpsuit. The jack was small and probably wasn’t made to steadily lift a car under these conditions, but there was a miracle in the works, and we needed that jack to be good enough. The guy with the dreadlocks disappeared and the guy in the jumpsuit took the reigns.
He told Elizabeth to get in the car and release the brake then put the car in gear. Then he told me to take this piece of wood, which looked like a fence post, and put it under the back tires. He started by somehow squeezing himself partially under the ramp, to see if there was any real damage done to the car. “Kein problem,” he said.
He managed to arrange himself out from under the car a bit and fit the jack between the bottom of the chassis and the ramp. He would jack it up a bit, until he could fit a piece of wood underneath, and then that piece of wood would hold up the car. He would move the jack a bit closer to the tire, then jack it up, until a taller piece of wood could fit under the car. This whole process was happening slowly and carefully. Every time he would move the jack, I would hold my breath, and he would look at me as if to say that I was almost out of trouble.
He raised the car up enough, that the bottom of the tire was almost as tall as the edge of the ramp. He took a piece of wood, which looked like it used to go to a piece of Ikea furniture and pushed it up against the side of the tire. He jacked it up a bit more, little by little until he was able to fit four or five pieces of wood, 2 feet long by 3 inches wide under the tire and on top of the ramp. He lowered the jack and removed the wood holding up the car and the tires sat on the wood planks that he placed under the tire. The car was still at a weird angle, but I knew that we were in a better position, than we were before.
The guy in the jumpsuit looked at Elizabeth, then asked her if she wanted to get in the car, and drive it carefully off the ramp. She thought about it for a second, then suggested that he drive it down instead. He got in the car and started it up. He put the car in reverse after I moved the fence post out of the way, which was supposedly holding up the entire car, and keeping it from sliding. We got out of the way, to avoid getting run over, and he backed the car out slowly, turning the wheel with exact precision to avoid the structural i-beams.
In the seconds, which felt like minutes, the car was out of the space and there wasn’t a scratch on it. We had gotten away with it. The guy in the jumpsuit got out of the car in relief, and gave me a big hug. Elizabeth and I thanked him relentlessly. He looked at us, then looked up, and pointed to God in the sky. He didn’t say anything, but agreed that the feat that had been accomplished, had in fact, been a miracle. Elizabeth retrieved some money from her purse, then handed it to the guy in the jumpsuit, but he declined. He said something in German, to the effect of, “It’s not necessary.”
We retrieved the desk clerk to operate the elevator and once we made it to the ground floor we were off. I was still feeling like it was a cautionary tale and that Elizabeth would have a remorseful attitude, eliciting a comment of, “Well, I’ll never let that happen again.” But instead she said, “I knew everything would work out.” Which made me think that she would do something like that again, because she knows that someone will make it all better. I was relieved that the car was fine. I wasn’t going to have to pay out the ass for damages of the car on my credit card, but I was still frustrated with how conceited she was about the whole weekend. But whatever.
Places We Bought Food and Drinks
Bus Stop Food Stand Alpseestraße, 87645 Schwangau, Germany There is virtually no place to eat near the Neuschwanstein Castle unless you find a place in Fussen nearby, which is probably the only reason this sad excuse for a food stand is open. The service is aimless and if you are able to get the food you ordered, chances are it will be underwhelming. We ordered food from this place, because it was near the bus stop that takes you up to the castle, but if you can hold out or aren’t in a hurry, there must be a place in Fussen where you can eat, even though we didn’t really look.
A&O München Hauptbahnhof Bayerstraße 75, 80335 München, Germany While this hostel was 5 times more expensive than most of the places that we stayed on our trip, they provided us with an amazing room, and miraculous hospitality, when it came from getting our car unstuck from the ramp in their underground parking garage. Their breakfast buffer for € 7 is nothing to write home about. They have cold cuts, bread, hard boiled eggs, cereal, and coffee, so if you aren’t too picky, then this place can fill your belly before you start drinking giant beers at Oktoberfest.
Hofbrauhaus Theresienwiese, Theresienhöhe, 80339 München, Germany We only went into two of the large tents at Oktoberfest and this was the one that we spent time drinking in. The waitresses are attentive and the food is delicious, especially when you are drunk. The prices are a little high, which is to be expected at festival, but the sausages and pretzels are actually cheaper than on the outside of the tents. Bring your lederhosen and sobriety and you will leave drunk and happy, even if you came in furious and frustrated.
Doner Restaurant Bayerstraße, 80335 München, Germany This place didn’t have a formal name from what we could tell, but it is only a block from Oktoberfest. If you are into great Turkish cuisine and you are blind drunk, this is the food that is going to sober you up, and keep you going longer. There is just the right amount of fat, grease, and carbs to prevent or feed a hangover. While there are places serving doner everywhere in Europe, you probably shouldn’t live on it.