Holiday 2011 Day 2

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The day began not so early since the night ended not so early. Chris and Stephanie had commitments so Aaron and I made plans to meet David and Traci at 10am at Oktoberfest. We made tentative plans to meet Chris and Stephanie later. Unfortunately, the airline had lost Aaron's luggage the day before. They told him that they finally found his bag and they would drop it off between noon and 1pm.

We finally met David and Traci at 10:30 and made our way into the Hacker-Pschorr tent. The band stand was in the center but there was no band playing and only about a quarter of the tables were filled. We found a table at the edge and sat down. Within a few minutes, there was a beermaiden there to take our order and a few minutes later, we started our first masses of the day.

By the end of the first mass, people had started to stand on the benches and Aaron disappeared to go find his luggage. Four Germans joined our table and we made quick friends with them. Around us we saw one lad challenge another to a drinking contest of finishing their masses as fast as possible. We also saw multiple lads taking off their wooden shoes, filling them with beer, and then emptying them into their mouths. We easily chose not to participate in such things.

Somewhere into the third mass, we had each downed a giant Bavarian pretzel and Aaron had once again reappeared with grim news: his bag had missed the last truck and he had to return at 4pm to receive the bag again. Chris and Stephanie's place was half an hour away from the festival grounds so he had thus already missed two hours. In mid-afternoon, we decided to take a break so we made our way to an embankment behind the tents while Aaron disappeared once again. After a lovely nap in the nice grass, we headed down to the bathroom and decided to look for a new tent.

While waiting for the others, I met a group of lads from Norway. I asked them their names and they replied in turn, "Anders. Sven. Bjorn." I told them, "That's no good. I already have friends with those names but none of them are Norwegian!" I turned around to someone tapping my shoulder and a girl handed me a tiny bottle of Schnapp's and said, "Here, you drink think. I can't do it!" The Norwegians had wandered off and the others finally returned from the bathroom so we headed for another tent.

Unfortunately, at this point it was hopeless to try. All tents had reached capacity and they were only allowing them in at a rate of one per ten minutes. We gave up and decided to head somewhere else in the city for dinner. We met Aaron-who finally received his luggage!-on the edge of the festival grounds and wandered around a bit. We discovered an Augustiner so we agreed to eat there. I messaged Stephanie with our location but they could not find it. Turns out they were at a different Augustiner and did not know the one we were at.

After eating ourselves into a meat coma and another mass, we took a walk down to Marienplatz for a nice photo opportunity at the fountain. Along the way, we met some people from Illinois and chatted for a bit. David and I split a beer from a sidewalk vendor and drank it while walking just because we could.

Around 10:30pm, Aaron and I realized we needed to get our stuff because we had a train to catch at midnight. We took our leave of David and Traci and headed back to Chris and Stephanie's. As we got off the U-Bahn, Aaron got stuck in the bathroom for a little too long. While walking back, we realized we needed to get them a gift for hosting us. We stopped at a pub and bought some beers. The place was closed and only a few locals were still there and they looked at us very oddly. We quickly purchased some bottles and scurried out. We said our goodbyes to Chris and Stephanie and headed back to the train station. We checked the schedule and quickly realized it wouldn't get us there in time. After a few minutes we were able to hail a taxi who took us as close as he could to the train station. We made our way to the platform, found our car, and boarded the train. We were still putting our luggage in the racks when the train pulled out of the station. We immediately realized our luck and then settled in for an uncomfortable six hours.

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