Last Saturday Shanna & I met a friend of ours from the area, and some of Shanna's co-workers, at the festival grounds in Stuttgart. It was a cold rainy day, so as soon as we all found each other we went straight into the first tent we saw, the Schwaben Brau tent. The beer was fantastic, and I LOVED the beer glass they served it in, shown below.
We met several locals there at tables next to us and had a great time singing & dancing on the tables with them. Afterwards Shanna & I took the train back and stopped in at a local tavern near our house. We found it awhile back, and go occasionally. It's a quiet, cozy atmosphere, and the people who work there are nice. There was a small group of people there who loved our dirndl & lederhosen. We ended up having dinner and talking with them for awhile. Finally we walked home, and the fun & games were over...it was Arkansas Football time!
Unfortunately Alabama beat Arkansas, but it was a fun game to watch.
This past Thursday Shanna wasn't able to get the day off, so it as just me and a few friends from here who drove to Münich for Oktoberfest. Of all the beers in Germany, so far the ones from Münich are my favorite. Unfortunately the beers sold in Germany are typically sold only in the region they are made. So Bavarian beers are hard to come by in the state we live in, Baden-Württemberg. So I was excited about tent hopping at Oktoberfest and trying all the Münich beers. Shanna had gone to Oktoberfest a few years back, and had said you couldn't tent hop because they get so busy, but she had gone on a Saturday. With this being a weekday during the day, it wasn't nearly as hard, and we were able to hit quite a few of the tents. The food was good, and the beer was better. And I got to try one of those huge pretzels you always see in pictures!
That evening the adventure began. The friends I went down with had gotten a hotel, but I had bought a train ticket and was going to take it back that evening to Stuttgart. I had thought the last stop was in Stuttgart, so I got on my train in Münich and took a nap. The plan had been to hop on the 7:20pm train, arrive in Stuttgart around 9:45pm, and with it being the last stop, I figured one of the people who walk around to make sure the train was empty would wake me up, and I'd be home by around 10. Sure enough, someone does come around at the last stop and wakes me up. The first sign of something wrong was it was 11:30pm. Then I saw the sign at the stop...I was in Frankfurt. For those not familiar with the geography, if you drew a straight line between Münich and Frankfurt, it would take 4 hours to get from one to the other, and half way in between is Stuttgart. So I had overshot Stuttgart by over 2 hours. Of course my cell phone battery was dead, so I couldn't call Shanna to let her know what was going on. Thankfully there was one last train back to Stuttgart that night at midnight. I was able to get on that one, and got into Stuttgart around 2:45am, and was home by around 3:15am. So it was a LONG night, but it makes for a funny story I guess. :)
The last fest day was yesterday. On Friday a friend of ours who lives in Heidelberg came down with her boyfriend. We went downtown so she could buy a dirndl, then came back to the house to call it an early night. The next morning we headed down to the fest grounds. We had gotten tickets with some friends in this area a few months back, so since our Heidelberg friends didn't have tickets, and our tent was packed, they went to another one with the plan for us to meet them after our reserved time was done. This tent served the local Dinkel Acker beer. It was pretty good, but I liked the Schwaben Brau beer from the previous weekend better. Our reservation got us three 1 liter glasses of beer, as well as a half chicken. They had a huge rotisserie with a ton of chickens on it in the kitchen that you could see and man...the food was good.
After our reservation time was over, we went looking for our friends. A few of their friends had also come down, and we had mentioned we had space for them to crash, so we were looking at a full house. It took us awhile to get into the tent they were in, and unfortunately as soon as we got in, they had just left. It turns out someone had thrown a beer glass up, it had hit the ceiling above them and shattered, and a bunch of glass had fallen on one of their friends and cut them up. They went to the emergency doctor area, and we met them there. She ended up being ok, just a couple of cuts. At that point, though, they were ready to head home. We all met back up at the house to watch some college football for awhile. Some of them wanted to go back out, but Shanna & I were beat, so we gave them the house key and they went out. One of the guys was tired and stayed behind. He fell asleep on the couch and Murphy made himself comfy with his new buddy.
The night ended with Shanna skyping with some of her friends from Texarkana and catching up with them.
Sunday morning everyone got up pretty late. It was fun though...we had a good time talking about the adventures from the previous day. The four people who came down with our two friends from Heidelberg ended up being some really nice people, definitely ones we'd like to go out with again.
So that's it for Fest week...it was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to do it all over again next year!
To see the pics from the past week, click here or any picture above. One thing to note, all the pictures were taken with our cell phones. We considered bringing our camera, but it's not a cheap camera and we didn't want to risk leaving it, having it stolen, or spilled on or dropped.
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