After we recovered a bit with a good night’s sleep and some tasty breakfast, we ventured back into town. There was a little fair going on around the main church. They had rides, food, souvenirs, and even little shops with clothing… and toys. Oh man.
Stupid toys follow me everywhere. The last post I did about toys was mainly about the die cast stuff. They also make plastic toys that are pretty cool.
I figured that if I could make it past this toy booth, I’d be fine. Wrong. We turned the corner and there was ANOTHER toy shop. Oy.
Moving on. We kept walking around and we eventually hit a hat shop. Felt hats are an Austrian thing. I tried one on. It didn’t look half bad.
There were only two problems with the hats. First, they were all around 50 Euro. Ouch. Second, I don’t have any clothes that wouldn’t look stupid with the hat. The orange shirt is probably the worst, but the rest of my wardrobe isn’t much better. Maybe a leather jacket is in order…
We did more wandering, more looking, and more church snooping. We came across one that was doing major renovations. The area surrounding the alter was one of the more beautiful, in my opinion at least. I’m not sure if it ever had color, but it is still amazing.
Here’s a close-up of the center.
We finally moved on across the river. Mary Jo had been to Salzburg once before and remembered a really neat park. We decided to check it out. Yeah, it’s kinda nice… I guess.
It’s a very nice park with lots of flowers, trees, bees, and even a little shrub maze. All those pale in comparison to one thing. There is one thing in this park that is so incredible, it brings grown manly men to tears. And no, I’m not talking about the fountain from The Sound of Music, I’m talking about this:
Yes, that is a 25 foot tall slide. Remember how slides you remember from childhood are huge, but in real life they’re small? Like the guy from XKCD, we don’t have that problem anymore. This slide IS huge. Mary Jo really wanted to go down it, but there were a ton of kids around.
We moved on from the park and found a little cafe to eat. Mary Jo decided to try the beer. She ordered a large.
Yeah, she sure did.
We did a little more walking, and quite accidentally, we ended up back next to that huge slide.
This time, Mary Jo crawled inside it.
Then she did it. She went down the slide. There were still a few kids around, but it had calmed down. So, she went down the huge slide. I was so proud!
Unfortunately, at this point I discovered that my camera was giving me a low battery warning. Not cool. I never thought that would be a problem, so I didn’t bring the charger. We still had two days of travel left. So, we decided to save the battery and take only important pictures.
We finished our time in Salzburg sitting in the park. We caught a 5PM train up to Munich. We got in about 6:30 and did the whole 5 minute walk to the hostel. We really lucked out with this place. We got the last two beds in the whole thing and it’s in a great location: minutes from the train station and a not-too-bad walk from Oktoberfest.
We got ourselves situated in our beds. I can’t say “room” because we were sharing the room with 10 other people. It’s cheaper that way. 😀 I had thought we’d just stay in and hit Oktoberfest tomorrow, but Mary Jo felt like we should go out. I agreed, and away we went.
Oktoberfest, even on a Wednesday night, is crazy. There are people everywhere! The whole thing really reminds me of the Minnesota State Fair. There are crowds, food stands, and rides. OK, maybe that’s where the similarity ends.
We grabbed a sandwich at a little food stand and walked around. We went to one of the beer “tents”. At Oktoberfest, there are multiple “tents” with different beers. Each “tent” is actually a football field sized building. Several hundred people pack into each building and drink beer. We tried to get into one, but that was a nightmare. It’s nearly impossible to move through a place like that. We eventually managed to find a spot outside in the beer garden.
We ordered a beer each. Now, when I say “beer”, I actually mean “huge mug filled to the brim with more beer than you want”.
We started in on the beer and also started talking to the people next to us – a younger looking man and woman. This is where is gets weird. We found out that they were Americans. OK, not too weird. Americans go to Oktoberfest. Then we learned that they were from California. Nothing weird there. Then we learned that the guy does IT work. Yeah. We managed to sit next to Americans, and one does IT. Needless to say, we got talking.
Their names were Eugene and Suzanne. Eugene does IT and Suzanne is in biotech. They were there on vacation. Eugene is 35, but looks like he’s 28. Suzanne is 28. Suzanne is moving to Switzerland in a few months for a 6 month stay for work. Eugene might come with. We also learned that Suzanne is Chinese and the Chinese can’t hold their liquor. Eugene is Korean and the Koreans can hold their liquor.
Weird huh? After a bit, Mary Jo finished her beer. You can see she was pretty proud of herself.
Eugene even took a picture of us together.
Eugene was nice enough to buy us a second round as a wedding gift. I think he just wanted someone to drink with, since Suzanne had given up. At any rate, free beer is good beer. They left soon after since Suzanne was fading fast. Mary Jo and I finished our second beers, then did a little more wandering. Wandering is more interesting after 2L of beer. We got back to the hostel a bit later. The hostel had someone at the door checking incoming people to make sure drunks weren’t just wandering in. He first asked us if we were staying there. We were, so I said “Yep!” Then he asked us our room number. Without missing a beat I said “122!” He let us on in.
Funny bit is, we weren’t staying in 122. That was our room number from the last hostel. I realized I had said the wrong thing about 5 seconds after we were in the door. Funnier part? 122 isn’t even a valid room number. Room “numbers” are A, B, C, etc. I even heard someone else outside say “That’s not even a room!” I guess the guy wanted confidence more than correctness. I thought about finding him the next day… but that would have been weird. 😀
We hit the hay, and fell asleep.
Next bit, our full day in Munich.
Notice how my face changes from the picture with the full beer to the one with the empty beer.
you look quite happy, with a full & empty beer mug.