Journey of thousand miles begins ... @ Oktoberfest

I landed in Munich following a full day of traveling. After leaving LAX on the afternoon of the 27th, I snoozed across the pond to London, stopped for an hour in Heathrow Airport, and hopped aboard another jet to get to München, as they call it, by the evening of the 28th.

big biers

I wasn't meant to be in Munich for long. In order to accommodate my odd schedule of flights to make it out to Ukraine, I had from 8PM to 9AM to kill before heading east.

So what does the young traveler do on the first night of his odyssey in a foreign country?

If you answered "head towards the famous beer and sausage festival that happened to be going on right then", you get a gold star. Oktoberfest was in fact in full swing and, absent a plan or place to stay, it seemed like a good enough plan.

oktoberfest test

I started by stashing my bag at the train station. This becomes an important plot point as the trip goes on. I grew to love that train station. I want to someday get married under a chupah next to the Burger King at München Hofbahnhof Station.

Heading to the 'Fest a few blocks away, I ran into some other English-speakers my age who annexed me. The 6 American guys from Chicago and Texas and 2 Aussie ladies from Kangaroo-ville were super cool and we found ourselves a table and lederhosen-clad waitress to bring us beer at our sausage fest. Several liters did the trick and everyone around us was having a great time grooving to the German live band playing traditional Bavarian songs shuffled with the occasional Hasselhoff classic. Growing bold, we took an excursion up to the stage to dance. Silliness ensued.

proust!

At the end of the night, I still had a now somewhat more acute problem of no place to stay while being somewhat less capable at that moment of addressing that particular problem. Fortunately, the train station didn't let me down and presented an economical and safe solution: 30-cent Euro will buy you as much time as you need in a well-kept McClean bathroom stall. My room was private, had hardwood floors, and even featured its own toilet!

After spending the night with Mr. John Porcelain, I got up in the morning to go to the airport to meet Mama coming in from Spain and fly to meet Babushka in Kiev!

Moral of the story: There's always another option if you can handle it ... the world is flush with possibilities ... har har har ...

snuck on stage