Dirndl Dirndl Dirndl!

Wow. I wish I had taken a picture of the mountains today. I tried to yesterday but it was dusk and the Alps were too far away to be seen well. They were looming above the house and you could see them so clearly the last couple of days....they're just amazing! We've had some pretty awesome and rather warm sunny days over the last few.

You know what else was pretty cool? My weekend in Munich at Oktoberfest. Ok, technically I was only at the actual Oktoberfest area for a couple of hours all weekend. This is because Heidi and I didn't believe it when people told us you had to either spend tons of money on reservations for a table in the beer tents way in advance or you had to get there before 7 or 8 in the morning in order to even get in for a few hours. As we now know, this is very true. We tried our best to get into a tent but it was not happening, we went too late in the day. It was also fa-ree-zing! But we did get a half meter long bratwurst while at the fest and it was delicious!

One of the reasons why we were so late in arriving at the Oktoberfest was because Heidi and I were determined to find dirndls. What is a dirndl, you may ask? Well, these are the traditional German dresses that girls wear, similar to the traditional German leiderhosen that boys wear. Almost everyone were wearing the traditional German garb and we definitely wanted to get in on that action. Although the dresses were a little on the spendy side, we wore them and were proud. They are a great souvenier and I absolutely plan on wearing mine again. We went to an area of Munich where there were tons of little shops and where only pedestrians were allowed. This was fun because it gave us a chance to see more of Munich than just the Oktoberfest.





It was kind of funny because we found our drindls in a regular looking department store, like a Macy's in Munich. There was a whole section with tons of dresses, little shirts, and aprons which make up a drindl. Even people who were not at the Oktoberfest but who were just walking around Munich in random places were wearing drindls and leiderhosen, so drindl sellers must make quite a profit.

Heidi and I are being very German in this picture! Heidi of course looks like the most typical German/Swiss girl in her drindl. We started the night off on our own visiting a couple of bars and cafes because it was so cold outside and since we were camping for the weekend, it was definitely warmer in a bar than back at our tent.

On our train ride to Munich we sat by a group of guys from Switzerland who were also going to the Oktoberfest. We talked the whole train ride and actually learned a Swiss card game called "Ciao Sep" which is basically the same as Uno. On Saturday night, we met up with a few of the Swiss guys and a girl from Brazil. We went to an Irish pub where there were tons of people from all over the world. We had a lot of fun talking to all different types of people. One of the Swiss guys took a special liking to Heidi and luckily for us he helped us get a cab for the trip back to our tent which was way on the other side of Munich.

Sunday morning we woke up and planned on doing some sightseeing. We hopped on a tram and worked our way through the city to a few areas that seemed appealing to us. We did really well with the public transportation, I am proud of our progress. There are some really really neat old buildings in Munich (see pic of old builiding). There are some pictures below of the places we visited. One of my favorite spots was this big courtyard garden area where people were walking around and some people were playing bocci ball. It reminded me of a garden where female characters in one of Jane Austen's books would walk with a beau (see pic of trees). It happened to be an amazingly sunny and warm day (especially compared to the snowy and cold one previous) so there were tons of people out. We ended up eating at this German restaurant. It was ok but we were almost late for getting back to the main station to catch a train because the waitress took her time in getting our check. One thing I noticed about eating out here is that people take a lot longer to eat. It isn't like get in, get out, and next customer like in the States. The train ride back was pretty fun since we sat with the Swiss guys we met on the way up to Munich. They were very loud and boisterous since they had been at the Oktoberfest all day and were continuing their drinking on the train.

The TENT was the area that we camped out at. There were hundreds of tents all over this big area. It was a fun place and it had bathrooms and washing machines and a cafeteria so we weren't completely destitute. We got into the place around 11 or 12 on Friday night and had to set up the tent in the dark. I think that it would be a really cool place to go in the summer especially, when it isn't practically snowing, because it's cheap and could be lots of fun with friends. The food in the cafeteria was good and cheap so we didn't have to spend a lot of money on food throughout the weekend, which was really nice.

I definitely had tons of fun this last weekend in Germany. It was nice to get away for a few days but I am still pretty tired from the trip. Unfortunately, Swiss kids have a 3 week break from school starting this week, so I will be having to deal with them a lot more than usual. Jana has this week off from work so I have a little bit of help with her around more but the next 2 weeks, I will be in charge of the kids all day, every day. Yikes!