After my last trip to an internet cafe i went for a meander around munich. It is a suprisingly clean city with a real buzz to it. Walking down the street you get the feeling that any kind of wonderful thing is around the corner. The magic of the place was probably magnified with it being okotoberfest. Literally every german was dressed in their traditional liederhosen or dirndl. I like to think that even lawyers and bankers disregard their suits for 3 weeks and turn up to work in their traditional outfit. To put it into perspective it would be like us in england hanging around in morris dancing gear or dressed as beefeaters. The weird but very cool thing about it is that no one cares it looks rather silly. Who say the german people dont have a sense of humour. Big respect to them all!
Anyway i went to a outdoor market in the centre of town and had the first few steins of the day (1 litre beer) At 1.00 i noticed a japanese couple were already passed out asleep on a table whilst everyone else just went about their business as if everything was normal. I then decided that the day would likely be a long one and went on a walk to see the sites of munich. I walked through this park called the Englischer gardens and for some reason everyone was nude. It was a sunny day but not warm enough to give everyone else the privilege of seeing my own special bits. I quickly scuttled off before any more OAPs appeared. The rest of the day was spent in the very impressive beer tents of oktobefest. It is like the best party you have ever been to. There was crazy oompah music, a giant ox roasting on a spit, dancing on tables and enough beer to fill all the lakes in the lake district. Needless to say my memories of the evening grew hazy. I made friends with a few irish lads and drank to our health. I woke up the next morning suprisingly hangover free. The beer gets drank so quickly they dont bother with all the preservatives we get in english lager.
After a hasty packing of my tent I was back on the road. I have developed a great technique using google earth for finding the best hitching spots. Typically i type in tankstelle munich into google maps. It then locates all service stations on the map. I found one on an autobahn in the right direction. I then search for the nearest train station. I flip the map into satellite view and if there are not too many things to jump over im on my way. The only downside is the walking . My converse are now so battered they are actually like a lyric from an artic monkeys song. After hopping over 3 fences and 1 ditch I had made it to a shell service station. I then had two lifts to salzburg. A woman called Nicol who was returning from Stuttgart. She worked as an estate agent and had a really nice convertable mercedes. She also like driving it fast. Everytime she talked i had to duck down to hear her as the top was down. I got dropped half way at another tankstelle where i met another hitcher (trampen in german). She was like a character from a book with her faithul hund (dog) in tow. We exchanged stories, I gave her some chocolate and she gave me some cola. We tried to get a lift together but the first taker we had didnt want to give a dog a lift too. After an hour in the car with amelio and his wife i was dropped at salzburg airport. more of wich in my next post.
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