Life as I know it.: Amsterdam & Oktoberfest: A Visit from Friends!

Derek and I at the Marienplatz in our Dirndl and Lederhosen

After bidding farewell to my parents at the Frankfurt Airport, I boarded a train en route to my next destination: Amsterdam. Full of canals, bicycles and a laid back atmosphere, Amsterdam was the perfect place to meet up with my friends from America, and Oktoberfest in Munich was the perfect place to end the adventure.

Amsterdam:

After arriving to the city center, I asked quite a few people for directions to my hotel where I would be meeting Andrea, Sarah and a new friend, Liz. After a long tram ride for my first look at the city and some help from some guys at a tire store, I found the hotel. After some hugs and introductions, we ventured out to the beautiful and wet streets of Amsterdam. We spent the first day wondering around the city and visiting the Anne Frank House. The museum was what I generally expected - it provided a tour through the actual house where Anne Frank and her family along with several others hid during the Nazi reign and provided a sense of sorrow and sadness that most Holocaust memorials portray. The annex was actually a lot larger than I had imagined, but the fact that they were allowed no sunlight or movement throughout the day was hard to grasp. Flushing the toilet could have turned them in. I am glad we visited the museum; once again, it poured light onto another sadness from WWII. That night we enjoyed a nice dinner of guacamole and cheeseburgers. And it was all delicious.

After sleeping in a bit on Tuesday, we enjoyed a late breakfast at a local bagel shop on the way to the famous IAMSTERDAM sign. After a photo shoot on the famous artwork in front of the Van Gogh Museum, we headed to the Flower Market to purchase some Holland cheese! I had no idea that Holland cheese was so tasty, but after some major taste-testing, I settled on a Amsterdam cheese cutting board and a hunk of pepper cheese. After walking around a bit more, we stopped for afternoon tea and beer at a street-side cafe and met up with Sarah's cousin. He has lived in the city for six years and offered to show us around. Cheese in hand, we headed towards the first stop: the most famous French fry place in the city. Contrary to popular belief, French fries do not just exist in America. They are sold by street-side vendors and enjoyed with mayonnaise in several European cities. Here, we tried the fries with a spicy, creamy sauce. Our next stop was a cute, overflowing pub tucked into Amsterdam's winding cobbled streets. We tried the Kwak beer served in fun wooded handles and then headed to a liquor bar that served several types of dessert liquor. We each tried one, and it was quite good! After some dinner at a Suriname restaurant near the Red Light District, we ventured out to see what all the hype is about.

The Red Light district was not nearly as threatening or dangerous as I had envisioned. I saw tour groups of people over 50 going through the neighborhood at night. Girls do stand in windows, and there are red lights everywhere, but it felt very safe. With prostitution and "light" drugs legal in the country, Amsterdam seemed to have a very laid back, some-what welcoming atmosphere. The next morning, we had a long breakfast before traveling by train to Zwingenberg.

Beautiful canals of Amsterdam

Felt like a hurricane in the middle of the city!

The biking capital of the world

Enjoying our Kwak beer

Andrea and I

Sarah, Andrea, me, Liz

The group with Sarah's cousin and our tour guide

The Red Light District of Amsterdam

Munich

We took off on Friday morning for a 3.5 hour drive to Munich, and lucky for us this time, it only took 3.5 hours! We arrived to our Sheraton airport hotel around noon and got settled in. Thanks to Sarah and her Hilton travel points, we had two upgraded rooms as preferred customers with huge bathrooms and comfy beds. After asking the hotel staff for the best way to get to Munich center, Derek and I dressed into our Tracht, or Lederhosen and Dirndl, and we all headed out the door ready for the madness of Oktoberfest.

After a shuttle and 45 minute train, we arrived to downtown Munich, with the Marienplatz as our backdrop when ascending from the subway below ground. We decided to stay in Munich center for Friday and head to the Oktoberfest fairgrounds early on Saturday. Our first beer stop was the Virktulienmarkt where we managed to make new friends and even get a free lunch snack. With a mass (liter of bier) in one hand and a bratwurst in another, I'd say we started the day out pretty well!

At the Virktulienmarkt

Our table neighbors shared these with us!

Prost!

Andrea with her beer and giant pretzel!

After the Virktulienmarkt, we made our way to the famous Hofbrauhaus where we made some Austrian friends and learned some German beer-drinking traditions and rules. If you stand on your bench at a beer garden, beer hall or anywhere else where beer-drinking happens, you are expected to chug the rest of the beer in your liter mug. I learned this rule the hard way. I had seen people singing and swaying to music while standing up and I decided to try out the fun. But thanks to my height, or lack thereof, I decided to stand my bench. Only after people started cheering for me and other tourists stopped in their tracks to take my photo did I learn what I was supposed to do. Well, I was a letdown. There was no way I could finish half a liter of beer in one standing. So after getting booed, I sat down. Lesson learned the hard way.

The group at the Hofbrauhaus!

Making new friends at the Hofbrauhaus!

Oktoberfest Fairgrounds

Oktoberfest consists of numerous gigantic beer tents, beer gardens, rides, food stalls, gingerbread hearts and anything else you’d expect at a large festival. But add men in lederhosen, girls in dirndls and enormous amounts of beer consumption.

We arrived around 9 am in hopes of getting a seat inside of a tent. We had no such luck, and found a picnic table at an outdoor beer garden where we sat until 4 pm To actually get a large table inside a beer tent, you must make reservations months in advance and spend at least 80 Euro on food and drinks. The outside beer garden satisfied us and after meeting several neighbors, watching a man jump on the rafters above us and drinking some beer, we bought some delicious pommes (fries) and headed back to the hotel in the rain. We ate a wonderful dinner at the hotel then snuggled in for a good night’s sleep. It was a wonderful trip with some of my best friends, and we survived Oktoberfest!