Frühlingsfest in Munich

Last weekend I did my last bit of traveling within Europe before I head home. Destination: Germany! Munich was such a great city, there was a lot of fun, a serious historical stop, and tents. Oh, the tents...

On Thursday, we arrived at our campground... yes, a campground. Alright, if I must explain... My friend, Dontina, her friend Brittany, and I were trying to find an inexpensive hostel to stay at and were struggling hardcore. I did what I always do in a crisis, turned to Google, did a little researching, and found this company, "Stoke Travels" that does a bunch of stuff for young people traveling throughout Europe. It looked fun and different, plus we got breakfast, dinner, and the third night for free. Booked!

Tents!

Good ole Campingplatz...

 So we arrived at our campground on Thursday and hung out there for the night. The campers were mostly American students also studying abroad, so it was a nice taste of home. I even met a guy who used to go to U of I, but transferred. We had fun reminiscing our favorite spots.


Friday was a beautiful day so we explored the city. We started in Marienplatz, one of the main plazas of the city. There we saw the Glockenspiel and some guys playing the glockenspiel. Can I say "glockenspiel" one more time? Such a fun word. We did a little shopping around the area and made a quick stop of the Apple store to get some wifi. Let me tell you, it was so funny to see dozens of people just standing outside the Apple store entranced by their phone. Clearly we weren't the only ones hijacking the wifi.

The Glockenspiel

Next we headed to the Viktualienmark, which is a big market held everyday. There were lots of fruit, flowers, and trinkets. Dontina and I both said we felt like it was full of things we'd see in our Grandma's houses. We had lots of free food samples and shared a delicious sandwich. 

Pretty Fountain

The May Pole in the center of the Market

The English Gardens was our next stop. This is a huge public park in Munich, bigger than Central Park in New York. In the park, we rented a paddle boat, were scared by demon birds, grabbed some lunch and half liters, walked through the park and people-watched, and finally came across "the wave." This was so cool, it was a man-made "wave" coming from underneath a bridge at the far end of the park where people would go to surf.  The thing I pointed out which I thought was interesting is that the wave had probably been there for a really long time, so who was the guy, that one day was just like, "I'm going to go surf there." Pretty funny.

Driving the boat.

Dontina and I in front of the beautiful waterfall

Surfers!

Finally it was time to head to the place I was most excited about...  Frühlingsfest! This is also called "Springfest" or "Little Oktoberfest." You could tell you were getting closer to the fest by the amount of lederhosen and dirndls people were sporting. The fest was so bright and fun and colorful. I went on two rides, swings and this really spinny thing where you have to hold on to the edges unless you want to fall off. The funniest thing is there were four German girls in drindls on that ride with me. They were sitting across the circle from me so I got a perfect view. The held onto the edge with one hand and were flopping ALL over the place. They let everything flop out and around, if you know what I mean. They kept screaming and laughing and then this one girl suddenly got a sour look on her face. Thank God she didn't get sick, because that would have been a buzzkill, but these girls were just so ridiculous. I'm convinced the ride operator made it go longer just for the sheer enjoyment of hearing these girls make fools of themselves. It ended with them singing the German version of the Spongebob Squarepants theme song. I was laughing so hard I was crying.

At the entrance

I love this picture

On the spinny thing. You can see the group of German girls in the front (blurry)

In case you were wondering what German Spongebob Squarepants sounded like...

We headed back to our campground for some (free) dinner and then back to the fest to see it at night. It was so beautiful light up at night. We were able to sneak into the Hippodrom, the big beer tent to look around a bit, but then headed outside to see the fireworks. I absolutely love fireworks. Sure, this might all sound similar to fairs in the summer in the States, but you have to remember, there were lederhosen everywhere.

At niiiiiight... (Spongebob anyone?)

Inside the Hippodrom

Pretty!

The three tentmates

That night we eventually headed back to the campsite again and hung around with our fellow campers. It was funny to just watch and observe these people for a while. It had been a long time since I'd been in a situation like this with so many American students (different than my program). Lots of great stories.

Saturday started on a serious note as we headed to the Dachau concentration camp. This was an intense stop. Among all the fun and craziness I've experienced abroad, it's important to remember that Europe is an immensely historical place as well. To get a taste of this history was heavy, but it's important to know and to share. We visited the camp on April 27. Coincidentally, the liberation of the camp by American troops was two days later, 68 years ago: April 29, 1945. That was a chilling realization.

Picture of the Liberation Day Photo

The maintenance building-turned-museum

Camp Road

Barracks circa 1944-45

Barbed wire with the camp in the background

The Krematorium

"Never Again"

 
After taking a beat to let impression of the camp settle, we headed back to Marienplatz to get some wifi again. (Thanks Apple!) We stopped at the big market again to get some delicious lunch. One thing about Germany that I love is that people are everywhere just hanging out having a beer. Tables were packed with people just chilling. So cool.

So many people!

Yummy food!

Our next stop was the Hofbräuhaus, the famous beer hall, to get our liters of beer. We had perfect timing too, because it had just began to rain (and hail!) on us when we got to the hall. We ended up sitting next to a group of Italian guys from Florence and talked to them a little. We also talked to people from Munich (again- I love how this is just what people in Germany do!) and they taught us how to say "cheers" and the song that goes with it. The whole hall went crazy when the band played it. I felt so content. Also, we walked out of the beer hall with our mugs. Free souvenir!

The Hofbräuhaus

Got my liter!

The rain had stopped so we headed to Springfest one last time. One more time in the Hippodrom, one more time seeing the beautiful Ferris Wheel, one more time getting some delicious treats (we had had nutella pancakes, waffles, funnel cake-but it was called something different).

Outside the Hippodrom

After the fest, we headed back to our campground and packed up. We had a super early flight Sunday morning, so we figured it best to get closer to the city center before heading off to the airport. After wandering around a bit, we finally made it to the airport and back to Rome. My last trip had ended.

Germany was one of those places I was like, "Yeah, sure, why not?!" When you don't have expectations for a place, the trip always seems to be so fun. Not that any of my trips haven't been fun. I've loved each and every one of them, and again, I am so blessed and lucky to be able to experience all of this.