Springfest!!! (end of week 13)

So Ashley, Katie, and I all went to Springfest this past weekend. Springfest is the smaller, more local version of Oktoberfest, which happens in the Fall. We met the Euroadventures tour group at 7:15 on Thursday night and departed close to 8 pm. Our 8 hour bus ride included a rest stop for dinner, and tons of movies. We finally arrived in Munich at around 4 am, got our hostel room key card, and settled down for bed. We were in a room with 5 other girls who were nice enough.

On the beer walking tour

Friday morning, we woke up early to get breakfast and meet the group in our lobby to go on a beer walking tour at 11ish. We walked to the meeting point where a guy standing on four kegs told us the "rules" of the tour. We split up into different groups of about 20 people, and our tour guide, Tom had 2 kegs for us. It was tons of fun walking around drinking beer on the tour, though people were looking at us weirdly, and it rained for a little bit. I felt bad because midway through the tour, some of the people in our group began to get rowdy and weren't really paying any attention to what was being said, though Tom said he had been doing this for two years now and was probably used to it. Before dropping us off at the Hofbrahaus for lunch, he gave us one last piece of advice: when saying "Prost" (cheers), you must look into the other person's eyes, otherwise you will have 7 years of bad sex.

At the Hofbrahaus we got lunch and drank more beer. Ashley and I got this dish of egg noodles with cheese and onions called "Allgauer Kasspatzle." This dish was very similar to mac and cheese.. with onions on top. Katie got frankfurters, and we all split pretzels.

After lunch we decided we wanted to go buy Dirndles, the woman's traditional German garb. And that's exactly what we did. We went into the first store we found on our way back to the hostel, where Katie went off on her own to find an outfit, while Ashley and I found a woman to help us pick out our attire. I'm glad the woman helped us because she knew exactly what size I was and helped pick out a style for me instantly... which was good because I had no idea what I really wanted. She let us try our outfits on together and after a while of debating whether or not to get it, we decided to buy it (they looked so great!). Afterwards, we made our way back to the hostel where we took a much needed nap. We didn't end up going with our group to the Springfest tents because they left at 5:30 and we woke up at 7:30ish. We all got changed into our Dirndles, took some pics, and headed out to Springfest.

When we got there, we tried to find the Augustiner tent, which was where Euroadventures said they were going to be. However, we ended up going into the first tent we saw, which was called the Hippodrom, and found a table to sit at. There were two people at a table so we asked to sit with them; the point of Springfest is to find tables of strangers to sit at and just to have a great time. We ended up each ordering two liters of Spaten beer and had a great time chatting with our new friends and singing and dancing on top of the benches. At one point, our new friend told us that the  German song that had just played was filled with inappropriate sentences.. and we had no idea what we were dancing to till then! At around 11:30, the tent started to close, and we ended up getting hotdogs at a carnival stand before getting a cab back.

Dachau

The next day, we went with our group to visit Dachau, one of the first concentration camps in Germany. We spent all afternoon there, walking around with our audioguide and taking everything in. It was actually a beautiful day which really seemed ironic since we were visiting such a terrible site. After walking around the camp, we ate some lunch in the cafeteria before heading back to our hostel for a nap.

That night, determined to get to the tents a little earlier, we made our way to the Augustiner tent at 8:00 only to realize that there were now bouncers outside who weren't letting people in, they were only letting people out. Fed up after only 15 minutes, we contemplated trying to get into the Hippodrom again. We finally asked these people near us how long they'd been waiting, and they said for about 45 minutes. We realized we didn't want to waste our time outside of the tent, and decided to head over to the Hippodrom to see if it was the same situation.

Hippodrom part 2!

At the Hippodrom, there was barely a line outside, and so we walked over to the entrance only to realize we needed a yellow wristband to get in. Katie walked over to the bouncer and asked if we could please get inside, since it was only three of us, and he thought for a moment and told us to wait a few minutes. He ended up getting us wristbands and then had us wait inside by the door while a waitress asked around the tables to see who would let us join them. I think that we got in because Katie and Ashley look more German. Anyway, we ended up joining a table of about four guys, and one girl, who was also wearing a dirndle. Almost everyone was German and wearing garb, and the tables were all reserved, which is why we were lucky we got in. We got to know the people at our table while we ordered beer and some pretzels; they were surprised we bought Dirndles for only being there for the weekend. The people at our table ended up leaving a bit early, while the three of us did part two of our bench dancing and drank another liter of beer. We stayed till it was closing once again, and took another cab back.

Sunday, our last day, we woke up early once again; this time to get a tour of the Neuschwanstein castle, one of the most famous castles in Germany, and also the castle which was the model for the Disney castle. We ended up on a double decker bus, which was much nicer than the bus we took on the way to Munich, and they took us to the area. When we got there it was raining a bit, so the three of us took a shuttle bus to the top of the mountain where the castle stood. Though one side of the castle had scaffolding for renovations, it wasn't the side which we would be taking pictures of, which was good. We climbed to this area where we could see the castle from a bridge, which was a beautiful view, and then we walked closer to the castle to see it up close. We ended up eating lunch down the hill from the castle and I got the same thing for lunch again. We also tried this dessert called Snowballs, which was supposed to just be fried dough balls and sugar, but turned out to be covered in cream. After lunch, we made our way back down to the bus, where we finally headed through the scenic mountain landscape back to Florence. We got back to the apartment at midnight, and went to sleep soon after. 

Looking sleepy in front of the Neuschwanstein castle!

I have to say, this is one of my favorite and most memorable weekends abroad! I would love to come back for Oktoberfest one day!