Keri Goes Abroad: festivals

All I've been hearing from home this week is how warm it's been - 80s in St. Louis, 70s in Boston. I hate you all. It snowed here multiple times last week. Luckily, these pictures are from the week before, when it was sunny and gorgeous. So these pictures are to make you jealous that you're not in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, enjoying Austrian donuts with me.

Maija and I had a little picnic on the riverside

She's giving a thumbs-up to the couple making out behind her

Our picnic view

Part of our lunch. The picnic included painting our nails

I was really excited about the gorgeous day

The dream team

This boat is part of a tour, and at the end it spins in circles and the (crazy) people APPLAUD. It made me sick just looking at it

Spinning...

Maija felt sick too

The view from the best coffee shop in all of Salzburg

The way up to Maija's

Still on the way to Maija's

And the view from Maija's window. I'm a little jealous, since my view is just of the hotel across the street (and on occasion, the people changing in the rooms)

Bio Fest! Salzburg had a fair for the organic farmers in the area

Maija and the menu, which was glued to the flower vase

Leslie and me

Maija and Leslie's roommate, Brendan

Gotta love festivals in Austria, where beer is always on the menu

The food: Knödelsuppe (dumpling soup). SO GOOD.

Eating our Austrian donuts. You could either get them slathered with marmalade or with sauerkraut. As appealing as they sound, we opted to not try the sauerkraut donuts

Oops!

Got jelly on myself

The random statue in the middle of Salzburg.

All of us at the festival

What would a festival be without an oompah band?

One of the many 10Euro beers of Oktoberfest

Oh, Oktoberfest. What an adventure. Everything is totally out of order because of how long it takes to upload posts with tons of photos, but that's how it goes. Time-wise, this post should be directly after my post about leaving the US, so please just imagine that it's there.

My flight to Munich got off to a slow start. I had to pay an extra $50 for my bag because, though I'd booked the flight through US Air, the flight was operated by Lufthansa and therefore I had to abide by the Lufthansa rules and regulations, which state that I can only have one piece of luggage. Yeah right. The security guy, thinking he was funny, asked "how long are you going for, anyway?" When I responded one to two years, he shut up pretty quickly. After making it through security, I discovered that my flight had been delayed by two hours. And I was already two hours early. So I found myself some food and a nice corner with a book, and waited.

The flight itself went off without a hitch. I took two Tylenol PMs and passed out for most of the 7 hour flight, which really helped me avoid jet lag and made it so that I could head immediately to Oktoberfest when I landed, though with a few detours first. I stopped by the hostel to try and shower, change and unload my things. But when I got there, things were a mess. The hostel was clearly overwhelmed with tourists enjoying the party, and the women who worked there looked like they needed a break. I tried to check in, but they told me I couldn't until 3. And then they handed me two keys. To two separate rooms. Even though I had booked two beds in the same room (one for me and one for my friend Al). Hmm. I couldn't be bothered to deal with it, and the woman had clearly exhausted her compromise abilities on the loud Australians in line in front of me, so instead I took my luggage to the storage lockers, locked myself in the girls bathroom and tried to look less like I'd just spent 4 hours in an airport and 7 hours sleeping sitting up. Then I met Al at the train station.

Al (Alexandra, but Al for short) is one of my friends from Bowdoin, and actually a former roommate of mine. She happened to be traveling around Europe, and we decided to meet in Munich for the 'fest. Thank goodness. Oktoberfest is one of those things that you're glad you've been to and remember fondly as a crazy and slightly stressful time. These feelings were probably exacerbated by the fact that I was a little tired from traveling, and a little anxious about Salzburg and my impending adventure. But I think I would have had a lot less fun had I gone by myself.

Together, Al and I got our rooms straightened out. Another lady helped us switch into a 6 bed female dorm for the first night, and a 6 bed mixed dorm for the second (as well she should have, since that's what we'd paid for). And when we could finally get into our rooms at 3, we dropped our things and headed out for a beer. A 10Euro beer, to be exact. And plenty of wurst.

Oktoberfest was nothing like what I'd expected. Well, that's a lie. There were certainly plenty of dirndls and lederhosen, drunk tourists, drunk Germans, and pretzels. But you can't wander around with a beer in your hand - you have to order one and finish it in a tent or in the biergarten outside of the tent. It's not in a field, but on a giant concrete area in the middle of nowhere. And I was definitely unprepared for the amount of rides that are there. So. Many. Rides. So many drunken tourists, too. And so much fun.

Kaci joined us the second day. Kaci and I wore our dirndls, and Al bought an awesome hat, and crazy tourists would try to take pictures with us (even after we'd told them we were American). We - mostly Al - got assaulted by a drunken Frenchman who'd lost his friends in the tent; we were unable to get beers inside of a tent but got plenty in the biergarten outside; we sang, we got inappropriately jostled, and we left totally Oktoberfested-out. Whereupon a drunken Australian boy from our mixed dorm room tried to climb into bed with me. When I asked what he thought he was doing, he responded with, "Well do you want me to join you or not?" What?? NO! Then he proceeded to climb into his own bunk and snore loudly the entire night. Really funny in retrospect, really annoying at the time.

The next day we did not return to the 'fest. Instead, Kaci met up with friends from Fulbright, and Al and I headed down to Salzburg - my new home.