I'm so very behind on keeping up with this blog. We are experiencing technical difficulties of mammoth proportions which I shall not get into here; and my free time is not as plentiful as I anticipated it would be. We are doing all kinds of wonderful things, but trying to orchestrate the logistics of dragging a family of 6 through a foreign part of the world does not coincide with the fly by night tendencies we can get away with at home. Actually, ironically, our first trip outside of Switzerland, to Munich during Oktoberfest - one of the most famous festivals in the WORLD - was planned so easily, that it was shocking when we wanted to go to Paris the following nothing special weekend only to find out that we would be unable to get home on the train. We then switched our plans to do Austria that weekend (who goes to 'Austria', should be easy enough) only to luckily book what appeared to literally be one of the last 2 rooms anywhere near Salzburg. So, needless to say we are now frantically planning the remainder of our trip one step at a time. Finding decent places to stay for 6, and then 9 of us when my family joins us, is rather time consuming especially considering said technical difficulties. Anyway..... Munich, Germany! (hopefully the video snips load on here OK...it is such a sloooow process putting this blog together!!)
Munich was a pretty cool place. If it weren't for Oktoberfest, I'm not sure I'd of been prompted to put it on our itinerary, but I am glad we got to experience it, especially since I have some German blood. Once we got past the travel, visited Dachau, and checked into our hotel rooms we wasted no time heading straight out to Oktoberfest. I mentioned before how it is no false stereotype that the Germans like their beer, how there were people cracking open their brew of choice on the 7am train....well, walking into the fest at 6pm at night we noticed a lot of this:
It was things like this that amuse me, and made me really glad to be there, ha. Not to mention I got to point out to my kids 'seeee THAT is why drinking alcohol in excess is bad!' ha. I really didn't know what to expect of this event. I knew it was popular – it is mimicked all over the world. I knew it was large, but it wasn't big like I expected. It was ENORMOUS. My guess is that you could probably fit at least 4-5 Tastes of Chicago in it not including a plethora of rides that are 6 Flags caliber. There were actually 2 Ferris wheels on the map, but we could only actually see one off in the far distance so perhaps this event covers more ground than I even realize. There was even an upside down roller coaster...it just went on and on. Then, there were the beer tents. Don't be fooled by the word 'tent'. These are large ornate buildings, some roomy enough for the capacity of 6,000 people. I think there are 12 'big tents' and then it appeared on the map that there were many smaller ones as well. We most definitely saw more on the map than we actually saw with our own eyes. From my understanding the tents are all owned by the major breweries of the city, Augustiner, Hofbräu, etc. The only beer served in each tent is the one they brew, obviously, and then there is food offered as well. You have to order beer and food from a seat in the tents. In order to get a seat in one of these tents, usually you have to have a reservation, which we tried getting like 3 weeks before the fest (yeah, good luck) so we just decided to wing it. For us, it ended up being the best thing anyway. There was PLENTY of food outside of the tents, and we figured it wouldn't be too difficult find someone to help score an Oktoberfest beverage when there are 1,000 's of tipsy people around singing songs about being cozy.
We were right!
We made our way into a tent area called 'Augustiner' which is supposed to be one of the more family friendly ones. Getting inside the building was impossible, so what ended up working for us is to simply make our way into the beer garden outside of the tent. We were told by a drunk guy that we could just grab a waitress randomly and order from her. I peeked inside the tent, just to see – and though it was lovely, having it just be the kids and us, we were better off outside because I couldn't see planting ourselves in one spot for very long.
The way we did things, we had a giant beer each,
the kids had pretzels bigger than them, there was some fantastic people watching available, especially with all the traditionally dressed, plus we met some nice English speaking people to talk to.
We even came across a group from a bachelor party who were playing a 'game' that involved looking for kids, so they could pass out candy to the little ones and ask advice on child rearing from the parents in hopes of bringing the groom good luck and lots of children of his own. Isn't that nice? I can't think I've heard of such a thing at home in regards to 'bachelor parties'.
We were right!
We made our way into a tent area called 'Augustiner' which is supposed to be one of the more family friendly ones. Getting inside the building was impossible, so what ended up working for us is to simply make our way into the beer garden outside of the tent. We were told by a drunk guy that we could just grab a waitress randomly and order from her. I peeked inside the tent, just to see – and though it was lovely, having it just be the kids and us, we were better off outside because I couldn't see planting ourselves in one spot for very long.
The way we did things, we had a giant beer each,
the kids had pretzels bigger than them, there was some fantastic people watching available, especially with all the traditionally dressed, plus we met some nice English speaking people to talk to.
We even came across a group from a bachelor party who were playing a 'game' that involved looking for kids, so they could pass out candy to the little ones and ask advice on child rearing from the parents in hopes of bringing the groom good luck and lots of children of his own. Isn't that nice? I can't think I've heard of such a thing at home in regards to 'bachelor parties'.
I'm sure ours was not one of the most sought after 'Oktoberfest' experiences, but we were very pleased with it. I'm certain that if we were not there with kids, and we had friends with us it'd be a blast to sit in one of the tent areas for hours and days on end as some do, ha – but then again, isn't that what drive-ways are for? ; ) After reaching maximum capacity for graceful beer drinking with children, and having enjoyed some yummy food such as hendle (a specially spiced rotisserie chicken), some fish, pork and sausage sandwiches we were going to let the kids try out some of the rides. At least that was our plan, but mother nature saw things differently, despite the fact that there was only a 10% chance of rain that evening. BTW, we did have umbrellas with us in Germany because we expected rain on Sunday, but that didn't help us when it began to downpour at the fest! So, I could complain that we ended up rather wet, some of more than others after standing under the spot of the awning where the rain pools and falls onto the ground....but we were pretty relaxed about it.
Oh, BTW many of the rides still were going in the heavy rain. I just couldn't go there though.....as I come from a country where water and electricity don't go hand in hand and I can't be convinced that it's any different in Europe despite the difference in a/c outlets. : )
Check out the lightening behind the ride!
The next day we had planned to go to the traditional costume parade, but we had had a LONG day the day before so being up and out at 8am.....in the predicted rain... had no appeal. We saw enough traditional costumes the night before and even just walking through the streets, so we just aimed for lunch and an afternoon of sightseeing in the city. This of course was a sightseeing day in the rain, which is not optimal – especially with a stroller, all our bags (we had to head to the train station near the city that afternoon), and 4 kids. Some people backpack through Europe – the Chaca's stroller through, something like this:
We started the day off by seeing the Glockenspiel chime. Now, this isn't some great thing that I'd make a special trip JUST to see. Some bells chime, some figures go around in a circle for a few minutes, but it is cute and very traditional so if you are already there it was worth seeing especially for the kids.
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| Glockenspiel |
That static sound in the Glockenspiel video is rain, alot of RAIN. We also visited St. Peters Church, the oldest church in Munich. It is elaborate, golden and beautiful (not much to comment on, but there are photos). The highlight was climbing up the 322 stairs of the church bell tower for a bird's eye view of the city. The high point for the kids was not the history of the building, being able to pass by the gigantic bells, the challenge of climbing this giant narrow staircase,
OR the reward of a cool city view at the top.
No, the high point was the fact that Samantha Brown of the Travel Channel had actually been right in that very spot. Love my kids. So easily pleased... that's why we can do this sort of thing with them ; ) Can you imagine if we brought them to Hollywood??
Munich is also known for beautiful park areas (clothing optional, haha) where you can sit around and people watch and drink beer – but (*un*fortunately?), the rain kept us from he visiting those.
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| Is it true? Has this ground actually been touched by Samantha Brown?!?!?!? |
A huge restaurant with high, adorned ceilings, rooms filled with rows of wood tables topped with giant beers and piles of food – then more rooms like this which you don't even know exist unless you head out on a journey. Girls wearing drindyls are walking around with baskets of pretzels, and there is an Oompah band playing in the background. Really, it was SO fun to be in the middle of! The not fun part is that people are pouring in the door on a regular basis and everyone coming in is just walking through the place on a hunt for a spot to sit – sometimes at a table already occupied by another party if there is room. 2 people, fine....try doing it with a wet stroller, and 6 people. So basically if you don't work it right, you could potentially still be wandering around looking for a table while people who walked in after you are already leaving for an afternoon nap. I'm not quite sure what we'd have done if we didn't have some older kids to help us! With Madison and Abbie at our home base in the corner of the entrance keeping tabs on the little two and stroller, Alex and I went in different directions to find people who looked like they were getting up so we could stalk their table. Fortunately for me, after about 20 minutes some fool was standing on a table trying to get his coat and I happened to smile at his shenanigans so he offered his spot, which I gladly took even though it was only a party of 4 getting up. The kids are small....we just squeezed right in there, it was better than wandering. Turns out that some German strangers ended up as part of the deal of the table, and as luck would have it the helpful woman sitting next to me was delighted to impress her lunch companions with some mad English skills they were previously unaware of. She told me that as a first timer, it's tradition to bring the menu home with me. For all I knew she was laughing in German behind my back waiting for me to get hauled off by the German police for lifting one of the two English menus they had in the place, but I found it more practical to just take some photos – and this way she was able to steal the menu herself, since it was her first time seeing that version, haha. Nice lady though, and she did make some good recommendations on food.
We ordered half the menu wanting a taste of all the different traditional dishes – quite a switch from what goes on here in Zurich, considering that you need a second mortgage to feed yourselves here ,which is a whole other blog post waiting to happen. We feasted on Obazda ( an herbed cheese spread), pumpkin and apple soup, mushrooms in herbed sauce with dumplings, spaetzle (noodles with cheese), suckling pig with dumplings, pork knuckle with sauerkraut(Grandma's was better!) and ox cheek in gravy. Of course some of the stuff sounds odd, but what fun is it to go all the way to Germany and sample nothing but roasted chicken and sausage??
I don't think there was a single thing we ordered there that didn't get polished off! For dessert, we visited a popular bakery and picked up a few treats for the 4 hour train ride home. Can't recall what they were called, but one of them was a tart like treat so popular they had a video playing about how it was made, and it involved a whole lot of fresh plums baked on top.
We now had our 1st of 3 Zurich weekend excursions under our belt, perhaps slightly more versed (or scarred) on foreign travel as a family than we previously were, lol. I'm also glad to report that the train home did NOT spell of pee, and that we were put in a much newer coach - yay!. With that I leave you with a little clip of an impromptu moment on the bus in the city that just made me smile....totally the essence of our weekend in Germany. More photos will be available on FB if you're interested...
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