Oktoberfest is the biggest folk festival in the world. As soon as it started, the city got crowded with people wearing lederhosen and dindle. It's a very exciting time to be in Munich.
The festival is extremely crowded. To get into one of the big "tents" (they're really just massive buildings) you have to arrive before noon, and if you leave your spot it's gone. You can only buy beer in a Maß, a liter, and it comes at around 6-8% alcohol, since the breweries make their best beer for the Oktoberfest. The festival is a lot of fun, but honestly it's probably the hardest place in Munich to get a beer.
On a completely separate subject, I was able to register for classes and I start this Monday. My schedule looks as follows:
Monday: Advanced Fluid mechanics 11:45 to 2 pm
Tuesday: technical writing 1:30-4:45
German 5-8:15
Wednesday: plant engineering 1:30-3
Thursday: plant engineering 8:15-945
No class on Friday so lots of good weekend trips.
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Wales
A day after my friend Graham arrived in Wales, I arrived in Wales. We decided it was really helpful to have a friend from home to explore a new city with.
He is attending a University in Swansea to study accounting for a year. It's an interesting little town on the bay.
I flew into London and took a three hour train ride to Swansea. I've never been to the UK so it was pretty exciting to see so much of the countryside and cities during the train trip.
We spent most of our time getting to know his new flat mates. There are 7 of them living together, and it's a good group. They are in their first or second year at the university, so I think by the end of it, they'll all be good friends.
The best part of the trip for me was a trip to the Mumbles, just south of Swansea. We toured a castle ruin, and hiked our way to a lighthouse at the tip of a little peninsula. The weather was perfect for my whole trip, which I was told is rare.
He is attending a University in Swansea to study accounting for a year. It's an interesting little town on the bay.
I flew into London and took a three hour train ride to Swansea. I've never been to the UK so it was pretty exciting to see so much of the countryside and cities during the train trip.
We spent most of our time getting to know his new flat mates. There are 7 of them living together, and it's a good group. They are in their first or second year at the university, so I think by the end of it, they'll all be good friends.
The best part of the trip for me was a trip to the Mumbles, just south of Swansea. We toured a castle ruin, and hiked our way to a lighthouse at the tip of a little peninsula. The weather was perfect for my whole trip, which I was told is rare.
Munich Food and Beer Tour
I haven't been able to post in a while, so I'm going to catch up with a few posts for the last couple of weeks. I'll try to keep it chronological.
Before my friend Graham left for Wales, we took a 4 hour food and beer tour through Munich. It was about 30 Euros and included beer and food for the tour... Completely worth it.
Our tour guide was an Australian guy who'd lived in Munich for 8 years. If you could pick anybody on Earth to lead a beer tour, this is your man. He was great at his job-- very funny and enthusiastic about it. The other people on the tour were from England, Georgia, and Alabama, so it was nice to talk with other southerners for a while.
We went through some of the older beer halls and a brewery museum, and eventually stopped to eat some traditional Bavarian food... "traditional Bavarian" might be the most used phrase in Munich. It was mostly meats and cheeses, of course the white sausages, which were pretty good. We ended at the famous Hofbrauhaus near the city center-- an old Nazi hangout where Hitler gave some speeches. Our tour guide left us here and we had a few beers with the other tourists.
The most interesting thing we learned from the tour was about the laws in Munich about beer. They still consider beer a food (liquid bread) so it's legal to drink beer just about anywhere at anytime. After the 1972 Olympics Munich got rid of public restrooms, which obviously becomes a problem when you have a bunch of beer drinkers roaming the city. Their solution was to deem any place that serves beer a public restroom, so you can just walk in a bar or restaurant to use the restroom, and walk out without buying something. Extremely useful information for someone with as small a bladder as mine.
They also were some of the earliest developers of refrigerating machines. It was not because they wanted to keep food fresh longer, but because it would allow them to brew beer all year long without having to buy expensive chunks of ice.
It's quite nice living in a city full of beer-lovers.
Before my friend Graham left for Wales, we took a 4 hour food and beer tour through Munich. It was about 30 Euros and included beer and food for the tour... Completely worth it.
Our tour guide was an Australian guy who'd lived in Munich for 8 years. If you could pick anybody on Earth to lead a beer tour, this is your man. He was great at his job-- very funny and enthusiastic about it. The other people on the tour were from England, Georgia, and Alabama, so it was nice to talk with other southerners for a while.
We went through some of the older beer halls and a brewery museum, and eventually stopped to eat some traditional Bavarian food... "traditional Bavarian" might be the most used phrase in Munich. It was mostly meats and cheeses, of course the white sausages, which were pretty good. We ended at the famous Hofbrauhaus near the city center-- an old Nazi hangout where Hitler gave some speeches. Our tour guide left us here and we had a few beers with the other tourists.
The most interesting thing we learned from the tour was about the laws in Munich about beer. They still consider beer a food (liquid bread) so it's legal to drink beer just about anywhere at anytime. After the 1972 Olympics Munich got rid of public restrooms, which obviously becomes a problem when you have a bunch of beer drinkers roaming the city. Their solution was to deem any place that serves beer a public restroom, so you can just walk in a bar or restaurant to use the restroom, and walk out without buying something. Extremely useful information for someone with as small a bladder as mine.
They also were some of the earliest developers of refrigerating machines. It was not because they wanted to keep food fresh longer, but because it would allow them to brew beer all year long without having to buy expensive chunks of ice.
It's quite nice living in a city full of beer-lovers.
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