Regensburg, Oktoberfest, and an Umpteenth Visit to Heidelberg

When we first started talking about actually arriving in Germany, Anya and I knew we needed to go to Oktoberfest. The trouble, of course, is that as soon as you start researching such a trip you discover you should have made reservations in a beer tent 6 months ago (or more...not an exaggeration). We decided we would just arrive super early and try to stay the night before with friends in Regensburg. We left on Saturday morning at a reasonably reasonable hour for Regensburg and had quite the journey there on the train. A number of young German teenagers were on their way to the Volksfest in Stuttgart (their version of Oktoberfest) and had already been drinking (at 9am) before the train ride. After having been packed onto the train with them for a good hour, we switched trains in Stuttgart for Nürnburg and had one of the most embarassing train rides of our lives (I'm pretty sure I can speak for both of us, here). On the platform, someone American asked me whether the train was going to Munich, and I of course responded politely that yes, in fact, it was. He asked where I was from, and when I said New Hampshire he thought I said Nürnburg and was thoroughly confused. I cleared things up for him, but by then we had clearly 'gotten to knwo each other' and it was too late. We spent the entire train trip sitting in front of he and his extremely drunk and nonsensical friend whom he had met earlier that morning. They both said some pretty ridiculous things to us (though our first 'friend' was the only one I could actually understand in plain English), and I kept wanting to just switch into German and pretend to be from Luxembourg so that the other people on the train would be clear on the fact that we had nothing to do with one another. This experience was pretty hilarious, but I was also glad to be getting off in Regensburg.

Once we arrived, we met up with Frauke, Anya's friend from her semester abroad, and Birgit, my au-pair from about ten years ago, who I hadn't seen since my post-Trier trip to Munich in 2009. Birgit met us at the train station and we found Frauke and had coffee and lunch in a small cafe in the altstadt. Then I had a wonderful tour through the city, courtesy of two residents and Anya, all of whom know it quite well. We finished with a climb up a large tower for a beautiful view of the city.

Regensburg from the Turm

Birgit and I on the island in the river, looking across to the Altstadt

We woke up bright (dark, really) and early on Sunday, and Birgit very kindly took us to the train station in Beratzhausen (near her house just outside of Regensburg) at 6:45 to catch our train to Munich. This trip was much more enjoyable (and shorter). We got to ride in a compartment train, which I realized embodies the entire romantic notion of travel by locomotive that I had tucked away somewhere in the back of my brain. On our second train we rode through a beautiful valley in a crowded car with the windows cracked open, and I was instantly reminded of our train trip from Cusco to Aguas Calientes when I visisted Machu Picchu. Something about the sound of the train through the window and the breeze coming into the car brings with it a feeling of adventure.

We arrived and made our way to the U-Bahn to the Wiesn, which looked something like this:

We had arrived right one time, as the tents open at 10am sharp, and we were lucky enough to find a whole table to ourselves in the Hippodrome that wasn't reserved until 5:30! We were soon joined by other, and made some new German friends who shared shots of schnapps that they had snuck in asked us all about where we were from. The band started soon after (though not before chugging an entire Mass of beer onstage together), and we had a lovely few hours eating spaetzle, drinking beer (including a Mass of birthday beer for my Aunt Jane!), and singing along and prosting 'zu Gemütlichkeit' with the rest of the tent.

Our Festzelt

Inside the tent, before most of the crowd has arrived

Happy Birthday Jane!

After several hours in the tent we decided it was time for a breather and went out to enjoy the rides (and man, are there a lot of them). Instead of buying tickets the way you might in the U.S., we had to pay for each individually. Some of them can be a little prohibitively expensive for broke students, so we just did a couple before we made some new German friends. Having to forego a drunken invitation to live rent-free for a year in our new friend Albin's big apartment in Munich, we returned--exhausted--to Tübingen that evening around 1:30.

The following week, we joined some friends from the Startkurs in Heidelberg. In Germany, the rail system has something called Laendertickets; for around 27 Euro you can get up to 5 people on a ticket and use it all over one Bundesland for an entire day on regional (read: slow) trains. Using the B-W ticket, 10 of us went to Heidelberg for the day. I had been several times before but was really wanting to spend some time with people from our class, so I decided tagging along would be worthwhile. We arrived after three hours on regional trains (it's probably less than an hour by car on the autobahn) and found a tram that took us to the altstadt (Laendertickets are also good on all public transportation--talk about encouraging tourism!). We rode the funicular up the mountiain to the stop above the castle and enjoyed a spectacular view and a few minutes of lying around before finding the foot road/path back down to the castle.

After a rather precarious journey down on foot, we stop for a nice veiw of the castle

The only side of the castle I hadn't actually ever seen

After visiting the castle and seeing the world's largest keg that still resides within it, we separated into two smaller groups and went for a nice walk down to a large, statuesque gate, across the river, along the other side, and then back over one of the main bridges. We finished our day, pooped and thirsty, in a little cafe. Somehow this is becoming a trend...