Binge Traveler Steph

After having a complete blast at Oktoberfest, I wanted to return for more. I was happy to hear that my friend Bri planned on going, but hadn’t made any sleeping accommodations. I took advantage of that, and we booked a tent to stay at Stoke again!

On Friday September 25th, Bri and I bought an 8:15 train to Munich. Once arriving at the central train station in Munich, I experienced a bit of deja vu.

The picture above is from the Central Train Station. I had been in this exact spot four years previous when I went to Germany with my high school.

It was extremely easy to navigate my way to the campsite since I had done it multiple times the previous weekend. Once Bri and I arrived, we had to wait in a long line to check it. The line wasn’t too horrible since we were fed multiple welcome beers. We also made a couple new friends, so both aspects made the time move by faster.

*Yes, I am wearing a unicorn onesie. I also wore it all the way to campingplatz from Heidelberg.*

Once we were shown where our tent was, we changed in to our dirndl’s and headed to Oktoberfest to meet up with Chris and his best friend Steve.

Chris and Steve were in inside the Hofbrau tent, so it took us a little while to enter the tent. But once we got in, we easily found a table thanks to Bri.

Unfortunately, we had to leave earlier than we wanted to because of a perv at our table. Bri had noticed that a guy standing on the other end of my bench took a picture under a girl’s dress. I immediately told the girl, and she began yelling at the man. I immediately left the table to get security, but it took a while because the fire guy I talked to didn’t speak good english (and I’m too shy to speech much German). Once I had security with me and began walking back to the table, all of my friends were walking the opposite direction, away from the table. Security said I had to stay with him, so I went back to where I was sitting. The pervert was sitting there looking through is phone, obviously deleting the picture. A minute later, five security guards approached and took the man’s phone. They looked through his pictures and couldn’t find the picture I accused him of taking *of course*. The pervert’s friends began calling game a liar because “she’s not German.” I at that point couldn’t control myself anymore and began screaming at the man, calling him all sorts of mean names. I literally almost started crying over this situation. But I then left the table and found my friends. We quickly drank our beers and left Hofbrau. As we walked around, Bri made some friends.

Bri found a random shoe and called this girl cinderella. The shoe Bri found actually fit the girls foot, so she must have been cinderella!

At this point, we had lost Chris *which was expected since we always ventures off by himself.* We split our group up to find Chris, but never did. Steve and I decided to leave the festival at that point because maybe Chris headed back to the campsite. On the extremely packed tram, this lady (I believe she was German) kept taking pictures of me and the girls standing next to me. So for some reason, I thought it would be funny to ask her to take a picture of the girls and I off my phone.

**To be continued…. until Chris sends me the rest of the photo’s since my phone was dead the rest of the weekend.**

I have finally received the pictures from the second day of Oktoberfest. We entered the Hofbrau Tent, but were unable to get a table. We all drank a beer, and then headed out. Picture below from left to right is Bri, me, and Erica.

Once leaving Hofbrau, we headed to a restaurant to get a bit to eat with our 2 new Italian friends. At this restaurant, I ordered a vegan meal. I have no idea what I was eating, I just ordered it because I saw vegan in the name. The meal was delicious, but way too expensive. Here are a few pictures of our group, and the new friends we made.

We then wondered around the festival grounds for a bit. We found a shot stand and of course took a shot of Jägermeister. We ended up separating from half of our group, and the few that were left with me waited in line at the Löwenbrau tent. I managed to work my way through the crowd and waited for maybe 15 minutes until a waitress allowed my friends and I in, and directed us to a table. As you can see from all the selfies below, we had a pretty good time at Löwenbrau.

We left the Oktoberfest grounds by maybe 6:30 to eat dinner at our campsite, and we of course continued the party there. I don’t have any pictures from the rest of the night, but the picture below should tell you how the rest of our night went.

If you can’t tell what that is, that was our tent. My blow up mattress was on the right, so I had a huge freak out mode when I woke up and couldn’t get out of the damn thing! I am very claustrophobic…

The next morning wasn’t very enjoyable…

On September 18th, a few friends of mine left early in the morning to catch a bus to Munich, Germany. Our bus ride ended up taking longer than expected because we got a flat tire, so we didn’t get to our campsite until about 18:30. There was a group of 6 of us that found a campsite through studentuniverse, so we stayed with Stoke Travel. Our first night, we just hung out at the campsite since we wouldn’t be able to spend much time at Oktoberfest. Here’s a couple pictures from the bus ride there and the only picture I have from the first night.

I woke up at 6:00 on Saturday morning to get ready for Oktoberfest. We ate breakfast and took a few pictures before we headed to Oktoberfest.

We arrived at Oktoberfest at 10:00, and the place was already swimming with people. My 5 friends and I walked around the festival until the parade started.

Once the parade ended and the keg was tapped, we attempted to get in a tent. We experienced extreme difficulty entering a tent because we did not reserve a table, and we didn’t arrive at 6:00 to wait for a table. We continued to walk around a bit more. I thankfully found a stand that sold potato pancakes (kartoffelpuffer) with apple sauce, so a few of us scarfed that down.

After a bit of searching, we were able to enter a restaurant. This restaurant was singing with laughter and cups smashing as everyone sang along to the music playing. My friends and I were sat down next to some Americans along with some locals, so we chatted a bit and learned a few customs (such as how to properly hold the stein). My friends and I got a small bite to eat as we finally drank our first Oktoberfest liter.

After an hour or two of being in that restaurant, we left and searched for a new beer hall to enter. My friend Leo (who is pictured directly above here) went to see if we could enter a tent when we met a group of four locals. These locals were so sweet and volunteered to show us around. They took us to the most traditional slide at Oktoberfest. Of course I went down this slide, thankfully with a little help from one of the employees. The picture below is of us on top of the slide, and you can see all of Oktoberfest.

Here’s a picture of Alex lookin’ fly as he holds Caro’s purse. 😆

After the rides, our new friends took us to a stand that had shots. At this stand, we all took a double shot of “hirschkuss.” This shot was extremely strong (and a bit hard to finish), but tasted like Jägermeister with a hint of cherry. Our large group then walked to the Löwenbräu tent. We had trouble getting in, but Katharina and Caro were able to get me in because’s Caro’s brother had a table in there. It took a bit of persuasion from strangers, but after about 20 or 30 minutes, I got all 6 of my friends in the tent. We all were finally able to sit down and enjoy a beer.

Leo was informed that one of our ESC friends (Bryan) had been lost in some random field because we was too drunk, so we all gathered and were about to leave to find him when I decided to say goodbye to my local German friends. After I said my quick goodbyes, I turn around to find none of my friends. I leave the tent, and still did not see them. I waited outside the tent for five minutes and no one came. I walked around in a couple different directions to see if I could find them and then returned to the tent, but still did not see them. At this time, it was dark and I was a bit turned around. I remembered how to get to the train station from the entrance of the festival, but I couldn’t even figure out where the entrance was. I just decided to walk, and tried my best to find my way. I walked past a group of guys and recognized their lederhosen. I had seen those lederhosen back at the campsite where they were being sold. Out of desperation, I approached the men and asked if they spoke English. They all nodded and said yes, and we got into a conversation. I ended up figuring out that they were staying at the same campsite as me, and all of their friends were actually about to head back. These nice Australian men told me I could come with them back to the campsite, and I could not stop thanking them.

On the bus that I was taking to the campsite, I noticed my friends. Out of anger, I hid so they could not see me, When I got off the bus, they tried talking to me, but I kindly told them I did not want to talk to them (for obvious reasons). I returned to the campsite and completely ignored my friends, so I decided to eat dinner with my new Australian friends. After dinner, I was watching a band playing with one of the Australian guys when he attempted to kiss me. I pushed him away, and after a few minutes he disappeared (I suppose that was a good thing on his part lol). A little drunk, I noticed a guy in front of me with beautiful long hair and really wanted to braid it. *side note: I have an insane obsession with long hair and man buns.* I asked one of his friends if he thought his friend would allow me to braid his hair, and he said yes and called the guy over. I ended up braiding his hair and hanging out with him the rest of the night (along with his friend Jack). I did not see my American friends the rest of the night.

.arOn Saturday September 12th, a few of us from my house went to a market called Wurstmarkt. This market was in a small city near Heidelberg called Ladenburg. This event was basically a large flee market with a festival full of music and beer surrounding it. Below is the only picture I took during that day.

On September 16th, the ESC took our group to the Audi factory in Neckarsulm. We were only allowed to take pictures in the show room. We received a tour around the entire plant, and were shown how all of their cars are made. This was really cool to see because we basically got to see a car made from start to finish.

The next few weeks were a bit more relaxed since all my classes had started. Some of the kids from the European Study Center went to the river to watch the fireworks that were being shot off from the castle. From there, we went to a club called Jinx with some of our German friends from SRH. After Jinx, a few of us went to a nightclub called Nachtschicht and Kaitlyn and I made a couple new friends there.

On September 7th, one of my good friends Simon whom I met in Frankfurt came to visit me. I’m the last person who thought this would happen to me, but I got really homesick. I’ve never been away from home for more than 3 weeks, so I began to feel all sorts of strange emotions. I wasn’t feeling like I was close with anyone here, so I broke down one night and couldn’t stop crying. So it made me feel a lot better when Simon got here because I know I could talk to him about anything. It was also nice to just hang out and relax since I had been doing so much the previous couple weeks. Here’s a picture of Simon and I. If he knew I posted this anywhere, he would kill me. Oh well!

I took the picture this way so you can see how much of a giant he is. I’m 5′6″ and he’s 6′6″, so I look like a complete midget next to him.

The same day, I went to SRH for Tuesday Club (which was on a Wednesday this week). I had so much fun learning how to play rugby, basically only because Bri and I had so much fun tackling each other. I was extremely, extremely sore the following 3 days; my whole body hurt. But it was definitely worth it!

On September 4th, the ESC took our group to the Schwetzingen Castle. We had a blast posing for tons of pictures and running around the courtyard. Here’s a look at what we saw.

Below is a picture that Callie thankfully took for me. I was trying to pretend like that was my dog. I’m strange, I know.

The best part of this day was after the castle. Once we left the castle, we walked 30 minutes to the Welde Brewery. There, our group received a tour of the place, were showed how they brew their beer, and got to drink tons of samples. Here’s a few pictures from the tour. I didn’t take too many pictures.

The picture above is beer before it’s filtered. The reason there is so much foam is because it has not been filtered yet. The foam from this beer was the best foam I have ever drank, so I wasn’t angry.

Above is me doing what I do best, drinkin’ 😉

It’s been close to a month since I last updated my blog because I’m been busy having tons of fun. Since the last time I updated this, I’ve been spending lots of quality times with my roommates, going out with them, and going on many adventures.

Above is a picture of Kelsey, Kaitlyn, and I exploring the Heidelberg nightlife.

Some of our roommates found rollerblades on the side of the road. So this is a picture of Kelsey and I rollerblading around our house.

The next few pictures below this are from a couple different nights. Pictured below are my roommates along with other American and international students from SRH.

One day, I went to Mannheim to see Straight Outta Compton with my friend Maxi. When I was walking to the movie theater, I saw this beautiful building.

On August 20th, I went to the Frankfurt airport to meet with a couple other students that were also attending school at the European Study Center. Loading and unloading 4 bags onto 2 different trains was quite difficult; I hope to never do it again. Thankfully, Mareike’s mother Heike went to the airport with me, so she helped me haul two of my bags around. I watched an episode of Game of Thrones as I waited for the other girl’s plane to land.

It only took one hour to drive from the Frankfurt Airport to Heidelberg. The building I am living in is ridiculously beautiful. This house use to be a mansion that was turned into a school. So yes, I live in a mansion :P My room is pretty small, but it’s really cute so I don’t mind. I also have a nice view over the courtyard.

The first day, I just unpacked my bags and got to know everyone on my floor. On Friday August 21st, the whole ESC group went out for our welcome dinner. After dinner, I took most of the group to a bar I knew of from Frankfurt called Shooters Stars.

On Saturday August 22nd, the whole ESC group went on a tour around Heidelberg along with a tour of the Heidelberg Schloss. Here are some pictures from the tour. The first four pictures are from the “student prison.”

The next four days here were a bit more chill. We went to the beach where I got super sunburnt. And where Mareike tried to burry me in the sand.

Hotdogs or legs?

We went to Indigo beach club and watched one of the best movies ever, Zoolander as we had a few drinks.

We had some fun with temporary tattoos.

And we went to a festival where Stefan was shaking cocktails (aka free mojitos all night *yussss*). Oh yeah, and Mareike gave me a dread.

It was bittersweet leaving the Netherlands. I had so much fun there, the country was beautiful, and the people were so nice. I will definitely be visiting again soon!

We first went to the Sex Museum, and then did a bunch of shopping.

Amsterdam is so beautiful, I seriously want to live there one day. The way the city is built is super interesting. The buildings are not wide, but are built up very high.

Once we got back to The Hague, the 3 of us went and had some drinks at the beach club Indigo.