Munich was undoubtedly my favorite trip this whole semester. It was one of our first that I had planned, and soon enough, there were upwards of 50 people from U of I, flying from everywhere all over Europe for one weekend of Springfest, the spring equivalent of Octoberfest. Scottie and I had gone to a dogtrack the night before, and were quite sleepy on the plane ride, but we hit the ground running and was ready for our weekend to begin, celebrating Scottie's 21st birthday the next day.
In line for customs, we glanced back for an instant, and honestly we just about had a heart attack. Scottie's dad and older brother Danny had flown in for the weekend to surprise him! It was absolutely the cutest thing Id ever seen, and he was super excited. His family had flown in to Dublin earlier this semester, and I had also spent time with his dad on dad's weekend, his dad is one of those dad's that just wants to be one of the guys, he had a blast with us in Munich.
We made our way over to their hotel, since Ryan and everyone else didnt get in for a couple hours to check into our hostel. My first meal in Germany, Im proud to say, was a pretzel, sausage, and a house brew. No regrets.
That night, after reuniting with everyone, we made our way over to the festival, which honestly was a giant carnival with a beer tent on every corner. These tents arent camping tents. Oh no. they are HUGE.
We literally spent the whole night in the beer tent, kept on running into more and more Illinois students :) Munich is famous for serving beer by the Liter, and even the tiniest waitress has been trained to carry at least 12 liters at a time.
The next day we spent exploring the city. During WWII, the city was heavily damaged by 71 Allied air raids. After US occupation in 1945, Munich was meticulously rebuilt, the only thing they kept was the original street grids and the churches. Thats why walking around, everything has an old town charm, but looks relatively new. The city is very clean and kept up very well.
We found Hofbrauhaus, Munich's largest and most famous beer hall. Its basically a restaurant who's main dish is a liter of beer. The place was MASSIVE, and i couldve easily gotten lost in it. The food was absolutely amazing, and are known for their own brew.
That night, we headed back to the festival to celebrate scotties birthday. We had a blast, went on some bumper cars and quite a few other carnival rides before settling down in the festival's beer garden for the night and headed to a bar after. This night was easily one of my favorite nights abroad.
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