After we left Budapest, we took a bus back to Vienna for a few hours, then took an overnight train to Munich on Friday. We camped for Oktoberfest, using Topdeck Travel, which I wouldn't suggest to anyone. It's not that it was terrible, and we were able to book it fairly last minute, but they made it sound better than it was, and the campsite was freezing. That aside, Oktoberfest was AWESOME! Really, really awesome. So the first day we got there at about 8:30AM, got in line for a tent, got inside and got a table by about 9:30. We ended up at a table with some awesome Italians and we're drunk by about 10:15. German beer is strong, easy to drink, and there is A LOT of it. At noon a band started playing, and then it turned into a shit show. But in the best possible way. More and more people joined out table, we sang songs(Ein Prosit), ate half chickens and pretzels. Every couple minutes someone would stand on their table, everyone would cheer them on, and they would attempt to chug the rest of the beer. Most were successful, some weren't, and those that weren't were incessantly boo'd and I also heard they were supposed to dump the rest of the beer on their head, but unfortunately we didn't see that. We somehow made it out of the tent at about 1 PM totally plastered and made it back to our campsite around 2 PM, passed out until about 7 PM, woke up with a gnarly hangover, nursed that, and went back to bed a couple hours later. Next morning, we head to the campgrounds at 8AM again. We decided to actually enjoy the festival that day, who knew that Oktoberfest had rides and games and wasn't just beer? No us. So we walked around for a bit, went into a tent for a stein, walked around a bit more, got bratwursts, rode the swings(yes in that order, no it wasn't a good idea), then we went to multiple tents looking for a seat and we finally found a table and we sat with a bunch of Germans, which was really cool! Koby immediately started drinking, I needed some time. We talked and sang more songs, then we both started drinking more and singing German drinking songs with appropriate dance moves and had a fantastic time. You really feel like family at Oktoberfest. It's serious drinking business, even for serious beer drinkers, Oktoberfest is no joke, but now having been I think everyone should go. It's truly a once in a lifetime experience and definitely one of the best we've had on our trip! "Pacing yourself" is really difficult, so just get drunk and wake up with mysterious bratwurst wrappers in your pockets like we did!
Our lovely, lovely campsite apparently had the flu virus going around, and who gets it? Me. Inevitably, Koby got it as well. That made our five hour bus ride to Prague really, really great. Once we were in Prague, we both needed to do nothing. So we did exactly that. Our second day in Prague, we walked around the city for a few hours, made some really basic soup, went for a walk at night, and went to bed. It definitely sucked that we couldn't explore Prague more. It's SUCH a beautiful city with a magical feel, I'm glad we visited, but I would love to go back. On Wednesday, we took a train and a bus to Krakow, Poland, which is where we are now! We're staying at the best hostel, free breakfast, free dinner, free drinks, free laundry, and more.
Yesterday we did Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. It was a lot. It's hard to explain how you feel when you're there, it's like a combination of sad, depressed, shock, and disgust. But visiting the camp was one of the main reasons I wanted to take this trip, and I'm really glad we went and I think it's an essential trip for everyone else as well.
On another note, as I recovered from the flu, I managed to get a cold. Being sick while traveling sucks, but I'm still so happy to be here. Today we're going to do a free walking tour through the Jewish quarter, and also explore the city. Then tomorrow evening we travel to Warsaw and catch a connecting bus to Vilnius, Lithuania! Then the other two Baltic states, Berlin, Cologne, Amsterdam, Scotland(hopefully), Wales, then home! I think the rest of our time here is going to go quickly, which makes me quite sad, but it'll be so great to see everyone and not have to carry out backpacks anymore!
A few last words:
I wish I packed for winter, I'm SO cold.
Also, we will figure out how to upload all our photos to a website for everyone to view! Sorry I know we should be better about that, but there are so many pictures and we're usually exhausted at night and don't want to bother with it.
Also, so.many.Australians. I'm getting really sick of the 'c***' word being used so liberally.
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