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.