After we ate we were tired again and had multiple hours of waiting until the girls showed up. We walked around, learned downtown very well and just had fun exploring a new city. Then we went to the train station to wait for the girls, their train was delayed, but they made it.

They were on the first car of the train and spotted us right when they got off. It was a friend of mine from college, who was ending her 10 week trip as we were starting our 6 weeker. She came with a friend of hers from home and an Australian she met a few weeks back in Greece and had been traveling with since. I immediately fell in love with the Australian the second she got off the train and I hadn’t even met her yet. Let me define being in love real quick: my roommates and I in college always said this about the ladies we had crushes on or were immediately attracted to, obviously it’s not that unconditional love everybody looks for, it’s just crush love, but it’s so much more fun saying fell in love. Anyways she was tall, outfit on point, gorgeous, and then the accent just put her over the top. The hype is real on Australian accents, everything she said was entertaining and cute. I knew I’d fall in love once or twice on the trip, but I didn’t think it’d happen with quickness like it did.

Turns out all the walking we did around downtown wasn’t worth it because our hotel was on the other side of town and Oktoberfest the other. One of the girls was a Holiday Inn member and got two free nights so we only paid 30 euro each for three nights at the hotel which was nice because we found out Oktoberfest was not cheap. Once we got to the hotel we could finally take our backpacks off and get going. We went back into town on the subway because the girls were hungry and wanted to go dirndl shopping to get ready for the next two days’ festivities. It was a process but the girls all found ones they liked and fit. Along the way Nate and I found these cotton sweat shorts with the lederhosen artwork on them and couldn’t pass on those, a true lifelong investment. I bought a shirt to match and we were all so tired from traveling that we decided to just go back to the hotel and get to an early start the next day. The sleeping arrangements were two to a double bed, and then me at the top of one of the beds lying horizontal above two of the girls heads with my feet on a chair. Not the most comfortable, but I made it work and was able to sleep so that’s all that matters.

We got to a very early start the next morning. We bought four liters of beer the night before and Nate cracked them immediately when he woke up and everyone else joined him in the indulgences shortly after. Once everyone was geared up in appropriate Oktoberfest attire we made our way. Turns out it is very legal to drink while walking down the street in Germany, the corner stores all have bottle openers for you to use too, so we also bought some on the way and a few sandwiches and pastries to hold us over. The beer wasn’t IPA, but it wasn’t Busch light so we managed. Buzzin pretty good we were overwhelmed as soon as we walked in the event. It was like your local state fair on steroids with heaps of people, beer, pretzels, and brats everywhere. We rode the roller coaster before there was any line, then made our way to a tent we heard was a good time. It wasn’t too busy outside of the tents yet, but inside it was fairly crowded and I can honestly say it was worth drinking before noon for. Something I would typically never recommend.

As we walked in a cheer started and we looked around and saw a guy on a table skull(make new friends, learn new words) his stein of beer and then everybody burst into louder cheers once those last drops were wiped from his chin. We found a table, ordered some beers and took pictures, lots of pictures. We made some friends, also from Australia, standing at our table and once our first beer was gone we were all starting to get pretty buzzed, so we did the appropriate thing, ordered another.

Once we had a couple sips of this round we walked around and mingled. When traveling be very open to meeting just about anyone, also very open to taking pictures with anyone. It’s funny because people come up to you and say picture? And I say of course, but instead of being the photographer like I expect, they want us in the photos with them. This happened more than once and I was shocked by it/ loved it every time.

It was about 13:30 and we were multiple steins deep. One member of our group was too drunk, in an attempt to get her home to nap she ran away from us and was just gone. She was gone with no phone or money for about 8 hours. Scary stuff, I know. We had all consumed too much alcohol to spend all our energy looking for her, so we went back to the hotel hoping she was there, since that’s where we were trying to walk her before she ran away by the subway station. Not to mention it was a terrible time for a member of the group to get lost because the Australian I fell in love with and I were startin to vibe a little bit. We still did, but it was different after a friend was missing.

She wasn’t there so we power napped hoping she would turn up and we would all sober up. We sobered up, but she was still missing. We freaked out and went to the police station, no help at all. So we went back to the subway station and Oktoberfest hoping we could find her but we couldn’t. There were thousands of people in the city that weekend just for Oktoberfest. What really sucked is that this girl was lost and Oktoberfest looked like a blast at night. But we had no time to think about going out until we found our group member. After about 4 hours of looking and having no luck we went to the hotel to see if she made it back, she didn’t. Then the girls decided to go down to the hotel restaurant and get food, the kitchen was closed but they got a message saying she was safe, made some friends, and would be home later 8 hours after she ran off. My college friend went from worried to pissed and we were all hungry and decided to grab some food and hit some bars. We walked to the subway and realized how tired we were and instead of going out we just grabbed food and went to bed knowing tomorrow would be a better day.

*Pop-up notes: if you’re traveling on a budget, don’t fine dine every meal. There are hundreds, and I do mean hundreds of little restaurants and food stands made with fresh ingredients that will fill you up for a low price at damn near any hour of the day.