Saturday morning, my roommates and I got up early, packed our bags, and called a taxi to Pressath. Taking the train into Nuremberg, we had a little less than ten minutes to get to our next platform, go to the restroom, and stop and get some lunch. Sydney and I were sprinting around, which made me laugh and laugh. Needless-to-say, we made it to the train that said “Munich” with McDonald’s in hand. Now, usually, the train ride from Nuremberg to Munich is only about an hour or so. By about the second hour of sitting on this train, we realized that we got on the local train, or one of the slow ones that literally makes about thirty seven stops along the way. We eventually made it into Nuremberg by about 2:00 PM or so. Leaving our bags in one of the lockers in the train station, we quickly found out that Munich was unpredictably hot, and all of us had dressed as if it would be overcast, as the weather reports had suggested. I overheated. Bad. I basically had to lie on the floor at the train station to try and cool my body down, in addition to drinking bottle after bottle of water. Have I mentioned that water isn’t free in Germany? Anyway, I kind of got to the point where I just sucked it up, and we followed the mass of people toward the metro station. Riding the metro a few stops, we made it to the metro stop closest to Oktoberfest. Even if we hadn’t of known the name of the stop itself that we needed to get off at, the thousands of people dressed in dirndls and lederhosen gave it way. Riding the escalator out of the station, we walked out to the entrance of Oktoberfest. My initial thought was that it was NOTHING into how I pictured it in my mind; it was as if I was walking into the middle of the world’s biggest fair. A Ferris wheel, roller coasters, the scrambler, bumper cars, haunted house, carnival games, and any other ride you could imagine. On top of that, there were more people than I have ever seen in my entire life. You literally could not stop to look around for even a second because the flow of people would have trampled you. With saying that, our eyes were directly mostly to the ground because people were throwing up EVERYWHERE. I’m pretty sure I saw three or four people throw up within the first hour we were there. Making our way to a small clearing, I called my friend Jason, and after about forty-five minutes trying to find him, we were able to meet up with him and his two friends Damien and Corey. Thankfully, they had saved us a spot at their table, so we were able to sit down, and were welcomed with a beer for each of us. At this point, I took one drink, and had to jump up from the table because I thought I was going to throw up. I think it was because of the heat, but thankfully, I never ended up puking. We ended up staying at the table for a few hours before we started walking around a little. It was really fun just to sit and people watch, meet people that were at the tables surrounding us, watch the beer ladies carry around ten or more beers in their arms, and sweat more than I have in my life. (That last one was extreme sarcasm.) Once we got up from the table, the seven of us headed over to the bumper cars for what may have been the funniest thing I have ever seen. Watching my roommates Sydney and Nicole try and drive the car around was absolutely priceless. I got a few pictures, but was laughing to hard to be able to film. Right after we got off the bumper cars, a HUGE storm rolled in, and it was instant downpour. Since it was a thousand degrees earlier, we had left all of our rain stuff in the train station. So… we decided that since we were at Oktoberfest, we’d have fun anyway. Sydney and I started dancing around in the rain, splashing the puddles at each other, and just laughing uncontrollably. Pretty soon Jason and Corey got in on it, and we started riding as many rides as we could afford. Well… that they could afford. (Love being a girl.) By about ten o’clock or so, we decided we needed to head back to the train station. Our plan was to get there, grab our bags, go back to Jason, Corey, and Damien’s hotel to dry our clothes, and then head back to the train station to catch our late train to Salzburg. I guess we should know by now that NOTHING we plan EVER goes according to plan. By the time we actually found the train station, we had already missed our train by five minutes. This, naturally, was the last train to Salzburg. Thankfully, Jason and the guys were more than willing to allow us to crash on the floor of their hotel room and were unbelievably appreciative of their willingness to help. We were even able to dry our clothes! I’m pretty sure that by the time we got to their hotel room, we all changed out of our wet clothes, and fell asleep as soon as we hit the floor.
Sunday morning, we attempted to wake up to catch the 0642 train to Salzburg, and you can pretty much guess how well that worked out. We did wake up, although by the time we actually got up and got dressed, it was closer to eight. Before leaving for the train station, we did take full advantage of the complementary breakfast. Walking to the metro, we were easily able to navigate to the train station, and boarded our next train. We arrived into Salzburg and found our way over to the Information booth. To save myself from having to relive the conversation, I’ll sum up it up by saying that I had to yell at the information lady. Needless-to-say, we ended up buying “Salzburg Cards” which allowed us free admission to countless attractions and museums, plus allowed us free fares on the public transportation systems. So with those, we decided that since we only were going to spend the day there, we would each pick out something we wanted to do. I decided, under the suggestion of my mom (…) to go to St. Peter’s church (built between 1131-1147), old Friedhof (cemetery) and catacombs. Although the cemetery was really interesting, the catacombs turned out to be pretty lame. I guess I was expecting underground tunnels and stuff. But this was more or less a creepy stairway up to a room with a plaque that said something in German, and a cross on the wall. Maybe it would have been better if I could read German…? After St. Peter’s, we made our way to the Hohensalzburg Castle, which began construction in 1077! As one of the largest medieval castles in Europe, it was MASSIVE! We ended up having to take a tram to the top of the Festungsberg mountain. Climbing a couple flights of stairs once we arrived, the views were breathtaking. We spent quite a while walking through the fortress, checking out the different towers, chapels, and views the fortress itself offered. Eventually, we made our way back down, and caught the next bus to our new attraction: The Untersberg-Cable-Car. Now before I get into this story, I want to share with you the myth behind the Untersberg castle. According to legend, “the Emperor Charlemagne never really died, but instead is sleeping in the Untersberg alone with his loyal knights, He will awaken when the empire needs him the most and when the ravens no longer fly around the mountain’s top. When this happens, Charlemagne, the “Father of Europe” and his men will again come to the aid of his people.” The legend sounds pretty cool, right? Well, with this information, we arrive to the Untersbergbahn, that suggests a “lovely ride to the top of the Untersberg Mountain in a spacious cabin of our cable car. During your ride, you will have magnificent views of the Rositten Valley and the surrounding mountains.” We climb into our Untersbergbahn, and start our ascent. Well, about half way through, a storm rolls in with the most intense wind, fog and rain I have ever seen. There was only about eight of us in the cable car at the time, and I can safely say that we were all very thankful to make it to the top of the mountain. Going into their viewing area, we looked out the window to see nothing but an intense fog. Deciding we wouldn’t be able to see any valleys or surrounding mountains, we got back in line to begin our descent, only to find out that the conditions were too critical to go down in. So, we waited, for over two hours. Finally, when there was SMALL break in the storm, we all piled back into the glass cube of death and started our way back to the ground. Somewhere in the middle, our cable car comes to an unexpected stop, and by this happening, we realized that it was snowing! We, thankfully, made it down to the ground and decided that we weren’t going to talk about that experience until we were far away from the Untersberg mountain. And unfortunately, due to being stuck on the mountain for hours, all the other sights had closed. So with that, we headed back to the train station to make our journey home.
It was definitely another unexpected weekend, but all I can say is, I’m going to be leaving Germany with a LOT of unforgettable memories.
Plans for this upcoming weekend: Prague, Czech Republic.
