A Whole New World

Clearly I haven't been keeping up in the slightest with my blog.  I've been out, you know...living my new life.  I'll try to do better, folks.

This past weekend I went to Munich for what else other than Oktoberfest.  And for those of you who have never been, Oktoberfest is kind of like Vegas in the sense that it really is exactly how you imagine it to be.  It consisted of a lot of beer drinking, pork eating, singing, table dancing and my favorite...friend making.  Although Germans tend to get a bad reputation of rudeness and poor senses of humor, I severely beg to differ.  Everyone from the waitresses to the forty-year-old German couple we met to the group of our new German friends seemed concerned only with being reassured that we were having fun.  Those Germans love to cheers (and I do mean about every five minutes).  So "Prost" everybody!

Aside from a festival revolving around beer (which was, in fact, beautiful), the city of Munich was also really beautiful...not to mention the beauty of seeing it all via bike tour.  Now, I hadn't ridden a bike since about the age of ten, but even while recovering from a less-than-mild hangover, seeing the city on peddle was so alluring and surprisingly relaxing.  We biked through the English Garden, which is ten times larger than Central Park (yep!), and I wish I could pack it up and bring it home with me because needless to say, we don't have anything like it in good ole' Lawrence, Kansas.  I wanted to switch places for a day with the girl laying on a blanket next to the river with her dog and her book.

Germany is understatedly an entirely different world from Italy.  The first things I noticed about Munich were its space and its cleanliness.  Munich had wide streets with bike lanes and sidewalks.  In Florence, they are all the same.  The streets are cluttered with pedestrians and bikers and you simply say good riddance to those who actually attempt to navigate in a car.  The streets in downtown Munich also aren't lined with graffitti, tourist groups, gypsies and street vendors like those in Florence.  One of the guys we met pointed out that one of the reasons for this, which made more sense after the bike tour, is that Germany can't exactly be proud of their past, therefore they focus on their present.  Whereas Italy has a fantastically rich history that sometimes prevents its citizens from worrying, or even caring, about their present.  Maybe this bores you and maybe I'm a nerd but I like thinking about things like that.

But make no mistake...after a soothing and thought-inspiring tour of the city, it was right back to the festival we went.  That's why were REALLY there after all.  And the lovely theme song of the weekend went as follows: