how the day sounds

So, Hello World.

Autumn has come in Denmark — night now falls by 4:30pm, the drizzle is neverending, my neighbour has kept their trampoline which was out in their garden, the trees have shed most of their leaves, everyone just huddles around drinking hot chocolate and christmas beers. So well, it's kinda cosy, but depressing at the same time.

But anyway. At the behest of Desiree Tan, the long overdue (do i ever post anything soon after, on this blog haha) post on OKTOBERFEST. which erm, took place in the last weeks of September, so erm, about a month ago. Heh. So here goes.


22 September 2008, Monday

Slept over at Berlin-Schönefeld Airport on my own for a night en route to Munich (: On hindsight, it was really nothing much, although I was pretty apprehensive about it before actually doing it, and actually felt accomplished after I did it (: But anyway, Berlin seemed like a great city with tons of fascinating neighbourhoods to explore and history to learn about, so we'll be back!

23 September 2008, Tuesday

Walked around the City Centre (: Saw the New City Hall with the Glockenspiel in the middle of Marienplatz, saw Frauenkirche, the one with the two onion-domed towers below, ate very typical rich Bavarian food (crispy pork knuckles omg those were so good), and went to Viktualienmarkt, where we bought more more and more food. Haha with us, its always about the food huh.

24 September 2008, Wednesday

Went to Dachau, to see the Nazi Concentration Camp :/ Was quite a sobering experience I guess, although Jgan says one must go to Auschwitz which is even worse because it was a death camp. Anyway, random wiki trivia — The slogan "Arbeit macht frei" was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps "as a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labour does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom." Which obviously, is rubbish, although I guess, it endless labour does bring about spiritual freedom, when, erm, you die from overwork in the harsh winter hmm, so there's a certain amount of accuracy there hurhur.

Then we finally went to OKTOBERFEST! :D Which was AMAZING. i thought it would only be beer tents, but not only did the sheer magnitude of these beer tents shock me (they didn't look like tents at all from the outside!), I also didn't expect it to be this full-fledged carnival haha. With rollercoasters, like the insane one below which we went on, which had 5(!) freaking loops. Was insane, really.

Us with random drunk Germans in the traditional Bavarian costumes, who just happily hopped into the group picture hahaha.

24 September 2008, Thursday

Got to the tents damn bloody early, so that we could get seats in the tent. Damn Singaporean, but we had to lah haha. Even though it meant we had to sit through a mass and watch the baptism of 2 kids in the tent, before the first beers of the day could be served haha. Seriously, baptising your babies in a beer tent? Hahaha, and beers for breakfast? Only at Oktoberfest (:

The Brass Band! Which had to taaah a full 1-litre of beer first thing in the morning before playing, which kept playing this song called "Ein Prosit" which is somewhat like a cue for everyone to stand up, singalong and taaah their beers haha.

GIANT pretzels haha. Damn amazing, and with the salt, damn shiok to eat when drinking litres and litres of beer haha.

Meet my ridiculous friends I don't know what the hell these 2 are doing HAHAHA. It just seems like some cantonese opera thingamajig haha I don't even know how it started haha, only that there actually are more than 4 of these in the series haha.

More happy people (: With the waitress with the damn ooh-la-la cleavage haha. Like Risse said, the costume really does bring out the best in female anatomy haha.

Then we moved to the Paulaner's tent (: And had even more beer and pretzels and those fantastic honey-coated almonds (at least that's what I think they were). Haha I told you, with us its always about the eating and drinking.

Random dudes dressed as beer bottles. Its damn amazing how its such a tradition, Oktoberfest. Like you see old men in groups at the tents, and you can totally imagine that they've been going since they were teenagers, dressed like this haha.

After all that beer, we went on Weixuan's Walking Tour of Munich! (: On hindsight, this is where it all started — seeing sights at night because there's always too much to do in the day. I say "on hindsight", because this is what we did in London and in Italy subsequently as well haha. It's always a case of "too many things to do, too little time".

25 September 2008, Friday

Wanted to go to Neuschwanstein Castle which was the inspiration for Cinderella's castle haha. But damnit we didn't have enough time so yeah :/ Anyway, we finally went on a real walking tour of the city, and it was quite incredible — our tour guide was this history professor (he was trying to become one anyway) so dates and stories just rolled off his tongue haha. Anyway, our ridiculous friends below. All from Scandinavia and still so damn scared of the cold, damn embarrassing haha.

So yeah, that was it (: Apart from the fact that I had to spend yet another night in transit sleeping in the airport in Berlin (with a pretzel and a book haha) and almost missed my bus back to Copenhagen because I overslept at the airport haha. I know, how can one oversleep at the airport right haha.

Okay that's all! Need to head out now (: Going to watch some film that's part of the CPH:DOX film festival. It's gonna be something about ChipTunes — "The ChipTune movement is made up of a bunch of technology nerds, who manage to get the most fantastic sounds out of gameboys, videogames and other electronic junk." Sounds like nothing I know, so haha should be exciting, especially since after that there should be a hands-on session (: