First Travel Week

Munich: Oktoberfest

So this blog will walk through most of my first travel week which was an amazing time. A little background about what I did before getting into the details. I started off by going to Munich for Oktoberfest, and it was a great way to kick off the week. There were about 40 of us that went to Munich and it was an amazing time. After Munich I went to Athens with Danyelle and Ryan. After Athens we met up Jake, Chris, and Daniel in Barcelona to wrap up the week. So to begin, I left Friday night from Padova with a pretty large group; I think there were like 10 or 12 of us taking the overnight train from there. I booked my reservation for a bed on the train way back in June and I thought that I would be in a room full of strangers because no one I was with was assigned to the same place. Turns out that there was another group that left from Venice (about another 30 minutes south of Padova) and most of them were in my compartment so I ended up knowing everyone in there haha! Worked out well for me, I didn’t have to worry about my stuff getting stolen which was a relief. The overnight train left at 11:30 PM and got into Munich at 7 AM so I slept a little on the train and was ready to go by the time I got to Munich.
When we got in we went straight to the hostel, which was conveniently located about a block from the train station. Once we got checked in and stored our stuff we went for breakfast. Jake had asked the front desk where to go for a good breakfast and they guy told him about a place that had some good stuff. There were 4 of us that were going to this place, and it turned out to be very difficult to find. So we walked for ohh probably an hour up and down near where we thought the place was and couldn’t find it. So we went into a café and two of the other people ordered a breakfast, but Jake and I decided to go look for a little bit longer so we walked down another 2 blocks and finally found it! I felt bad for the other two who had already ordered but we had a really good breakfast. We had white sausages, with the best honey mustard sauce I’ve ever had in my life. It was amazing, I have no idea what was in it but I could have eaten that plain. And since we were in Munich for Oktoberfest, we had a few beers to go along with our breakfast haha. It was Saturday so it was just like being back home tailgating before and Iowa football game!! After eating, we met back up with the large group and most of us went to Dachau, which was the first concentration camp in Germany. It was a very interesting experience. It was weird to think how many people had been held against their will and how many had been killed there. Our tour guide was great and gave us a lot of background on what went on at the camp. It still blows my mind that people can be brainwashed into treating people like that. Our tour guide said that the survivors want people to see this place and to be reminded of the all the lives that were taken there. At the end of the tour our guide showed us a statue with a quote on it that said “To honor the dead. To warn the living.” It’s an amazing quote and it wrapped up the tour really well. After the tour I went with a smaller group to Olympic park which was a really cool area. We went up in a tower and got an amazing view of Munich. The next day is when we went to Oktoberfest…..
This was probably the best atmosphere I have ever been in. There were so many people, laughing, dancing singing, and of course enjoying the beer. We were warned that the beer was much stronger than back in the US, and some listened and paced themselves, and well, some didn’t lol. We had a reservation for the tent so we got two liters of beer and a chicken meal. It was fun to try and sing along with all the German songs, but they also threw some American songs in there also. It was so funny to see all the people in the traditional leaterhousen (no idea how to spell it and spell check didn’t recognize it lol) no matter where people were from. We had a large group which made it a really good time, but there were so many people there I guess it really didn’t matter. Outside the tent was a huge fair, for all back in Iowa, it was like our state fair but even bigger. There were tons of food vendors, rides, etc. The rides were insane, the roller coaster they had there looked like a legitimate one, and not a little dinky one the fairs through up. However, since we were all so full, we decided to stay away from it haha. Well to keep this blog a little shorter, I’m going to move on now to Athens.

Athens:

City wise, Athens has been my favorite place to visit. It was a lot bigger than I thought it would be and much more busy. We got in pretty late and found our hostel, which was in a perfect location, right in the middle of the city. After we put our stuff away, we went to go have a drink at the bar below our place (owned by the hostel), but they were just closing. But it was one of the workers last night in Athens so they were going to go out for a while longer and invited us to go with them. So we went to a discoteca with them and it was completely empty, so we had our drink than headed back so we could get an early start the next day. We took a walking tour of Athens and saw the temple of Zeus, the Greek and Roman Agoras, the acropolis, and some other things like that which was really cool to see. After that Ryan, Danyelle, and I walked around the flea market for a long time. They sold everything there, it was so cool! But highlight of the day was as we were walking along, there were guys selling sun glasses, bag’s that sort of thing, and they had them laid out on sheets. All the sudden we see a cop come running up and the people selling the things really quickly grabbed their sheets and they all scattered in different directions, it was hilarious! The cop caught one guy and got his sheet of sun glasses but the guy still got away, but it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. That night we went out for a great Greek meal and had a lot of fun. The next day we went to a Greek island called Hydra which was beautiful. The water was really cool looking, the town was really cool, it was pretty much paradise. Again to keep it shorter I will now skip ahead to Barcelona.

Barcelona:

So here we met up with Jake, Chris, and Daniel and we all had an amazing time. Barcelona was also a really cool city, with all the Gaudi architecture and La Rambla, it was all really cool to see. The first day we were there we went to the beach and relaxed all day, it was perfect. Jake and Chris got in a day before us and had met an actor from Holland named Iban, so we met him that day and hung out with him for a while. He was a really nice guy and new a lot about the area. The beach was packed with “entrepreneurs” that would walk around trying to sell stuff, give massages, and other things like that. Surprisingly there were tons of Pakistani’s there who were like our own little butlers lol. We had a man named Ali Ali who just sat by us, sold us beers, waters, pops, whatever we wanted haha. If he didn’t have it he would go to the store, buy it, and come back to sell it to us for a slight profit lol. It was pretty nice having him there, but it got annoying having people come up every 30 seconds trying to sell stuff to us. Although, I bought a knock off pair of Versachi sun glasses for 8 Euros so that was pretty nice haha. That night Iban took us out to a really nice restaurant on the beach and then took us to a few clubs which was really fun. There was a strip that was just discoteca’s with the workers on the street that would try to get us to go to their place. One lady offered us a free drink to go in so we did and ended up starting the dancing there. It was a good time, late night, but a good night none the less. We took it pretty easy in Barcelona and just took our time, saw a lot of sights and relaxed so it was a great way to wrap up the first travel week. So that’s what I have been up to lately, sorry the blog is so long, guess that’s what happens when you do a lot hahaha. Until next time, Ciao!!