Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Photographic evidence that we are a pair of horse's asses

Why, yes, it IS 6am on a vacation weekday - thank you for noticing!

We are getting over our jet lag slowly but surely around here. Yesterday I was up at 4 and at 5:45, I heard a voice calling out to me from the bedroom as I clacked away on the computer in the office,

"Quiet, you!", (He was kidding) and then "You hungry?"

"Strangely, YES."

"Great. I'm up. Let's go get breakfast."

We heal our jet lag with grits and bacon and pancakes around here, y'all. And this morning, we are dog-walking, bill-paying and just generally not sleeping at this ungodly vacation hour. During a work week, fine - I'm up at 6 - but on a vacation day? Well, we just spent the last week and half sleeping in until 9:30 everyday, so it feels a bit wrong to be awake in the dark morning hours.

Though it does feel good to not be hungover.

Which leads me to the real point of this post - WE WENT TO OKTOBERFEST, PEOPLE, AND IT WAS AWESOME.

I mean, obviously, but...

Our plan for Oktoberfest was a bit vague beyond the Let's Wear Festive Attire To Drink In The Tents concept. It just seemed like no matter how much we talked about the thing, we couldn't get past the part where I'd be wearing this sweet Dirndl and Bubba'd be wearing these awesome Lederhosen and OHMYGAWDWON'TITBEFUN!

Thankfully, we had some friends in Munich and from the States who were meeting us there and they had thought it through a bit more thoroughly. And thankfully, even though Bubba's Lederhosen did not end up in Munich inside of his luggage as planned when we checked both our bags at the same time in San Francisco through to Munich and then his bag ended up in FUCKING BEIJING OF ALL PLACES while mine was the first one off the carousel in Munich, we still had a fantastic time with one of us in festive garb and one of us in a borrowed Tshirt and the same jeans he wore on the plane.

Yep. Boobs. Check.

Poor Bubba - he's a good sport and sturdy traveler if nothing else.

Firstly, we went to Oktoberfest the night we got in just to check it out.
Um, whoa dude.

We went to the parade.
Um, whoa dude.

We went to Oktoberfest after the parade to DRINK IN THE TENTS.
Um, WHOA DUDE.

We went to the English Garden to DRINK OUTSIDE THIS TIME.
Alright, really, whoa.

We took off our shoes and put on mismatching coats and staggered back to our hotel where we could DRINK IN THE HOTEL BAR UNTIL WE WERE BLIND.
And, officially WHOA. As in, STOP.

It was a good time. And then, we slept. For a while.

And once we'd recovered from the madness of Oktoberfest spent properly, we went around town ogling and eating and drinking most everything we could find.
There was a lot to be found.

I'll tell you this, I really like Munich.

Once we'd eaten all the pretzels (OH THE PRETZELS! Just guess what my project for this week is?) and had all the beer and tried all the wurst (Currywurst? Are you aware of this thing? I should be eating it right now.) in Munich, we took the train to the cutest looks like it's made of gingerbread town in Germany, Freiburg.

Hello, cuteness.
Cuteness doesn't extend to wurst, but still.

I think I said, "This place is so cute!" about 700 times and I'm sure that our hosts were wondering if I did, in fact, speak any English beyond that one statement. I had proven that I didn't speak German immediately, since apparently Scheibenwischer is not the locally recognized term for "Nice to meet you!"

Who knew?

We cavorted about Freiburg like happy little beer drinking, wurst eating, picture taking monkeys for a few days and even made our way to the Black Forest for some waterfall hiking and The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music mad running about on the impossibly green and grassy hillsides.
No, this is not a Hollywood set.

Seriously - I didn't know there was a place that actually looked like this. I thought the teevee had made it all up with poster paint and CGI and shit, but no - there it is - Really Real.

And when our hosts were completely maxed on our "Ooh! Look at that!" and "Ooh! Taste this!" and "Hehehe - it says 'einfart' on that sign!", we finally left Germany on the train for Amsterdam.

It's OK. You can laugh, too.

Oh, the train. Friends - I love the train. And Deutsche Bahn is about the best thing going as far as I'm concerned. I'm not going to go into painful detail about our train rides, because in the end they were just train rides, but it made me jealous as hell that Europeans can just hop a train and be in another country in half a day or less and it doesn't cost more than a pain in the ass jumper flight to LA from NorCal.

Plus, it's not a complete mind-sucking hassle, the food is good, they have a bar and it's way comfortable.

Just saying, US - we need this.

Amsterdam, though, yeah - it was good times. Even when we thought that the town was playing tricks on us and trying to tease us for our New Amsterdam Glow by bending its buildings all wonky style or by letting all the weirdos roam the streets at the same time.

Fantastic place.

Yes, we are mellooooooooooow.

We crammed history, sightseeing, walking the markets, visiting the coffeehouses, ducking into bars and general canal-wandering enjoyment into 3 days and, I'll tell you now, we'll be going back.

Though, it'd be nice to do so when the weather has made up its mind, because it's a little strange to experience nearly every weather pattern in an 8 hour timespan. Seriously: sun, heat, clouds, fog, drizzle, rain, HAIL and wind - all in one day.

It's just hard to get dressed is all I'm saying.

Not that it kept us from having a good time oh noooo. We just took the change in weather patterns as a sign that we needed to visit THIS coffeehouse or THIS bar or THIS Burgermeester with its fab smelling beef and so on.

The fact that we made it to the airport in one sober piece is a bit surprising, but I guess that's the adventure in it.

So, yeah - the fortuitous US-based Oktoberfest party last year was a nice push in a new vacationing direction. Not that we'll forgo skiing and beaching vacations from now on, but we have drawn up a mental mind list of other European (and Australian and Greek and and and) cities we want to visit sometime soon.

And we're totally going back to Munich and Amsterdam sometime. Soon.

14 comments:

  1. You're SO funny -- we've seen it all now -- Finny in a Dirndl. Fantastic!

    Finally -- you're moving in the right direction. I'm hoping European vacays will completely unseat skiing and the beach -- as it should be! Looks like you had a wonderful time -- I'm soooo envious. You'll have to make MANY more return trips to hit all the fab places that you missed!

    (Oh, and currywurst? Yummmmm. We have to hide the bottles of curry in our house to protect them from our curry marauding German BIL.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lookin' hot in your Dirndl! I am so jealous of your fantastic-looking adventures. Germany's where my people hail from so I've got a soft spot for that crazy place!

    Just to let you know, I awarded you the "One Lovely Blog Award" on my blog today:
    http://sourkrautkrafts.blogspot.com/2010/09/one-lovely-blog-award.html

    Feel free to pass it along to 15 of your favorite blogs or just accept my adoration and leave it at that! Yeah, it's kind of a lot of work to pass it along so feel free to skip that step. Really.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've wanted to go to Munich to pretty much eat only pretzels. You know me with my picky eating. But I love, love, LOVE pretzels. mmm...

    ReplyDelete
  4. I just wanted to say that I am so happy you went to Germany, and more specifically Munich. I think everyone should go there at least once before they die.

    My mother is from there, and I lived there for a year, so I may be biased. But it's pretty much the shit.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think whoa about covers it.

    P.S. I have been to Amsterdam, and I know that coffee is not what is served in coffeehouses there. Naughty Finny.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Awwww now I want to go!!!

    *sulks*

    Still, I'm glad you guys had a fabulous time! It looks *amazing*!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I canNOT believe you actually wore the dirndl. And yet, YES I totally believe it at the same time. AWESOMENESS.

    Coffeehouses, eh? Hmmmmmm.......;o)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wow, check out those pretzels!!

    (Take that as you like it!)

    And cool German outfit! Think you'll be wearing that for Halloween this year?

    Glad you had a great time!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Glad to see the dirndl didn't end up around your neck. In all honesty, I half expected a picture of you passed out on the parade route with the skirt over your head :)

    So happy you had such a great time...and didn't become an international incident in the process. Prost!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Did you notice that "Jeph" wanted to know if you were wearing your Dirndl for Halloween, cuz if so, he's there!
    looks like you had a blast!
    welcome home.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Love this! All of it! You are hilarious and it looks like you two had a blast. And, how hot are you in your drindl? And how bummed at I not to see your man in those lederhosen? And, how AWESOME are you for going in your drindl anyway even though your lederhosen man was in a tee and jeans? SO AWESOME.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'm smiling Nicole. Thanks, xixi

    ReplyDelete
  13. THere are so many reasons I love this post and this trip, but I'll just mention a few:
    1. You still wore your outfit even though Bubba's were in Beijing. Nope. no chickening out for you. You WORKED that costume with the boobs and the sass and the shoes with buckles. LOVE YOUR MOXIE.
    2. Can you please figure out how to make awesome homemade pretzels and teach me?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Love this.
    You and Bubba do a vacation right!

    ReplyDelete

[2013 update: You can't comment as an anonymous person anymore. Too many douchebags were leaving bullshit SPAM comments and my inbox was getting flooded, but if you're here to comment in a real way like a real person, go to it.]

Look at you commenting, that's fun.

So, here's the thing with commenting, unless you have an email address associated with your own profile, your comment will still post, but I won't have an email address with which to reply to you personally.

Sucks, right?

Anyway, to remedy this, I usually come back to my posts and post replies in the comment field with you.

But, if you ever want to email me directly to talk about pumpkins or shoes or what it's like to spend a good part of your day Swiffering - shoot me an email to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom.

Cheers.