Oktoberfest was fantastic! The beer, the wine, the singing, and of course the women were all in your face kind of amazing. We had planned on spending most of our time in Germany here, but changed our mind after we found out how hard it was to get accommodation, and also how early the beer tents closed because of terrorism fears (this was only about two weeks after 9/11). Luckily the wine tents stayed open late for some reason, so we all developed a taste for Reisling. Most of the evening is pretty fuzzy, which I’m sure is directly related to my getting separated from the group.
We had decided earlier that if we got split up, we’d all meet at a certain place at midnight. Well, somehow I couldn’t quite located the meeting point, and at about 1 am, I realized that I might be in trouble. I didn’t have any way of contacting the others, so I figured I should probably think about finding someplace to sleep. I talked to a taxi driver, and he told me that every place in town was full and no place could help me at this time of the night. Well, I remembered the hostel in the town of Dachau that we’d stayed in the previous night, and decided to go there. It was about a 30 minute drive, and was about 2:30 am by the time we got there. Of course it was shut tight, but in my drunken state I wandered around and finally found an unlocked window leading into the kitchen. I figured at least it was safe and out of the elements, so I passed out on the floor. Luckily I woke up early enough to get out of there before anyone found me. When I was sober I realized that I had Christine’s cell phone number with me the whole time, so I called the guys and they headed over to pick me up. We were all very relieved that we’d found each other, and proceeded to take advantage of the hostel’s showers. It turns out that they had all slept in the van the previous night, and had a miserable time. We decided at that point that one night in Munich was ok with us, and decided to head off to Prague that day.
