Published on
October 3, 2006 in
Life.
Osnabrueck is a city of about 160,000 people located in the Niedersachsen state of Northern Germany. It’s about 2 hours away from Bremen, 3 from Hamburg, and maybe 2 from Hannover. This is the city where I will spend the next 5-6 months studying.
When Erik and I arrived in the train station, we had no clue where we were. We got a taxi and let the driver figure out where Erik’s apartment was at. October the 2nd is a German holiday, so everything was closed. I couldn’t move into my apartment until the 3rd, so I was going to crash at Erik’s that night. We were pretty tired, so we just relaxed and slept for a bit. When we woke up, met all of Erik’s roommates and his one roommate Jahn offered to take us on a tour of the city, which was perfect. He showed us around and gave me some good initial clues about where I was. He also showed us some of the better places to eat at around town.
The next day, I moved into my apartment and met my roommates. 3 people from Poland, 1 German girl, 1 guy from the Ukraine, and some others. In total, we are 8 people. I was a bit shocked at first, I’m used to dorm life and living with like 60 people… but having a smaller apartment with 8 people was not something I expected… I didn’t really have much planned for the first day, except Erik and I both had no sheets for our beds. Later that night, we met up and figured out how to get to IKEA and I spent like 90 Euro buying pillows, sheets, forks, spoons, rugs, and anything else that looked cool. IKEA is just an amazing store, which sucks because there are only like 2 located within an 8 state radius of me in America. However, I now had an apartment and a bed, what more could I want!?!
Published on
October 2, 2006 in
Life.
Monday morning, I woke up dead with no energy at all. The weekend had completely drained me, but we had to check out of the hostel. Everyone from our group was just kind of lounging around, making plans for the day. Erik and I eventually got down to the train station and stowed our luggage for the day. Since we had been stuck in Oktoberfest all weekend, you really had no idea what Munich looked like! We headed downtown again and actually did some touring. Munich has a really nice park and huge garden area, along with a nice river that flows through the town. I fell asleep for a few hours by the river and took some pictures of the ducks.
One of the coolest thing I saw in Munich was a pay-as-you-go bike. They were scattered all over, they had little meters in them and you would have to pay like 1 Euro for 5K biking or something. It was so weird at first, seeing bikes lying all over, but the government has to make good money on them because everyone bikes around here.
Another interesting thing were the stop lights. Since everyone bikes, you have stop lights for the bikes. Public transportation using busses is very popular too, so they have stop lights for the busses. Combine that with stop lights for normal cars and I have no clue what the hell this is:
We grabbed dinner and lounged around in the train station for the rest of the night until our train left at like 3AM. We eventually got to Osnabrueck in the late afternoon and Erik went to his apartment. We had finally arrived at our destination!
Published on
October 2, 2006 in
Life.
We checked into our hostel Friday afternoon and were drinking by 6 o’clock. We checked out Monday afternoon and took a train late late that night to Osnabrueck. The time between then was simply amazing. Oktoberfest 2006 was one of the best times of my life for many reasons and hopefully someday I can do it again. I could type stories for hours, but I will try to keep it short and simple here. If you really want to know, come find me in person!
Our hostel was the Meininger Hostel located barely 3 blocks from Oktoberfest. In a very cool twist of events, the room reservations we had booked were through some British travel company, which included a whole list of events for us to do all weekend, which ended up making Oktoberfest so great. The guides met us at 6PM and we had dinner at a nearby restaurant. We got to know everyone in the group and then set off to Oktoberfest. It was pure chaos, even this late at night. Hundreds of thousands of people scurrying about. We sat down at a table outside a beer hall and started talking 2 Italians at the table. They had been drinking all day and couldn’t speak a word of English, but we all understood each other perfectly. We told them it was our first time here in Oktoberfest and they bought our first rounds! It was a good start of the weekend.
Saturday, we woke up at 8AM and went to wait for a table. At Oktoberfest, the big Liter beers are only served to you if you are seated either inside a beer tent or alongside the tent, in a small section of beer tables. The tent we had chosen was already full, so we grabbed 2 beer table and sat down for the day. I started drinking at 10AM, others held off until later. We sat at that table drinking all day long. Around 6PM, I got curious and managed to sneak my way into a beer tent. Entrance to the tents is strictly controlled, you either need a wristband or your name on a list, but I managed to find a wristband. Inside the tent is like heaven, there is a giant band playing in the center of the tent and everyone is as happy as can be. I stayed late until it shutdown and then found my way home.
Sunday, we woke up at 10AM and headed out to a bar called Ned Kellys, a split Irish and Auzzie bar. Some new friends of ours were from New Zealand and wanted to watch the rugby championship game. It was my first rugby match and it was great. From there, we walked around the downtown for a bit and then headed back to Oktoberfest. There were 5 of us and we managed to get into a beer tent. From there it was amazing. We sat in the tent for the rest of the night and enjoyed the company. I can’t describe it. The entire weekend was amazing.
