Last weekend, I traveled to Germany to go to OKTOBERFEST!! I landed in Munich late Friday night and took the metro with my good friend from high school who is also studying in Paris and was traveling with me. Luckily, we found our way onto the right train line and headed to our hotel room. After a glorious reunion with my friend from BC who was waiting for us at the hotel and a lot of catching up, we went to bed around 2:30 am. Considering that we were planning on getting up early on Saturday morning to head to the festival, this wasn’t the smartest idea. Nonetheless, 4 hours of sleep later, we woke up and made our way outside in the shockingly cold weather (my host mother warned me that it would be cold in Germany… I should have listened) to walk to the carnival.

We congregated outside of the Hofbrau tent and got into what probably was supposed to be a line but was more like a giant mass of college-aged students not standing in any semblance of a order. I was genuinely scared that I was going to be trampled (like Best Buy on black Friday status). Luckily, this did not happen. It came frighteningly close though.

When the doors were opened, we rushed to grab a table and somehow managed to squeeze into one in the corner with some other BC students. Picture an intense and massive game of musical chairs combined with a bit of survival of the fittest and you have a pretty accurate image of what transpired around 9:15am.

Around 9:30, we ordered beer! (I know you’re probably thinking that 9:30 is disgustingly early to start drinking beer, and I concur. But, it was Oktoberfest- exceptions are made.)

The rest of the day was filled with more beer-drinking, pretzel-eating, getting yelled at because we were standing on the tables, and alternating between screaming the Boston College fight song at the top of our lungs and chanting USA over and over again. Unfortunately, the day also consisted of making our way to the war zone that was the girls bathroom. It was a scary sight, to say the least. Girls certainly don’t mess around when it comes to their bladders.

Around 3pm, we left the tent and headed outside to walk around the rest of the carnival area. The combination of poring rain and really cold weather at this point certainly didn’t stop us from enjoying the rest of the afternoon, but it is probably the reason why my immune system hates me right now.

However, if I could go back in time, you better believe I would have done it all over again because despite the black friday-like, musical chairs, survival of the fittest, poring rain madness, it was so worth it.

xo

eop