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Ziggy Zaggy, Ziggy Zaggy, Oy, Oy, Oy!!

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

Yesterday was also a day for Luneburg’s Bayerisches Oktoberfest. Theresa and I set out around 8:45 after resting from the Hamburg trip. The first stop was the carnival games. I know that I’ll never win anything worth while, but it’s fun to play. The game I chose was a pull-tab type game that gave out points. Apparently, there are enough points in there to be able to win a 19″ LCD TV. Yeah, right. 5 Euros got me a whoping 60 points. Instead of trading them in for 2 pencils or a little Dora the Explorer notepad, I gave them to one of the little girls playing. I think she could’ve used the notepad more than I could.

Next mission was to score a Nutella crepe. I’ve never had Nutella before, but Theresa insisted I needed to try one. For those who have not been fortunate enough to have it, Nutella is a hazelnut-based sweet spread that tastes a lot like chocolate. So we finally found a place that had them. I went a step futher and got a bananna and Nutella crepe. Pretty amazing.

Short walk later we found our way into the major beer tent. We started with ein Mass of Lowenbrau and found our way to some free seats up by the main band. Theresa promptly made friends with a German guy sitting next to us. Never got his name, just referred to him as “Her German”. He would constantly inform her of the weirdest stuff that sounded like he just pulled it out of his ass. Apparently, in Munich, Italians are crazy. Needed to know that. Plus, he would randomly switch between English and German. I think he was too drunk to realize it. They all were. They even had to call the Deutsche Rotes Kreuz to help one of his friends. She was practically in a coma.

It’s really fun to see Germans letting go and partying. They’re usually so reserved, but put them in a beer tent, give them some beers and music and they become party animals. An interesting fact I found out is that they love the song “Country Road, Take Me Home”. And, as with most English songs that they played, they only knew the words to the chorus and would mumbel the rest.

We later found a couple other students and merged tables with them. Thanks to the previous 3.5 liters of beer, I joined the rest of the tent in standing on the benches singing, toasting, and dancing. I don’t know if you can call what I did dancing, but I’ll call it that. After ordering my fourth liter, I started to feel it and not in a good way. On a previous round, I accidentally ordered the wrong thing, and ended up with a half liter of some sweet beer. It definitely was not sweet in a good way, but I ended up pounding it like a champ. I don’t know why, I know that I should stay away from sweet alcohol, but I drink it anyways. Theresa was ready to go, so we headed out. We just made it off the grounds before I decided to decorate the ground with some of the beer and crepe I had ingested earlier. Made me feel a little better. After puking and several attempts by Theresa to just sleep along the sidewalk, we made it back to our housing around 2:00 a.m. For once I was ok with everything being closed today, which gave me the excuse to sleep until 1 p.m. without guilt…

Posted in General, Germany, Luneburg, Travel | No Comments »

Pub Crawl

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

So last night was the pub crawl for the university exchange students. It was pretty fun. After school, I wondered around Am Sande and ran into Katie and Jillian. After that we just snowballed into a group of 10-12 fellow USAC students. That’s what I love about Luneburg. It has the stores and facilities of a large city, but it’s small enough that you run into people that you know, all the time.So we stopped by Chilli, Luneburg’s best doner place, before heading to the crawl’s starting point at 8pm, Malzer’s. After meandering down a very steep and narrow staircase, we made our way into the cellar for a “Get to Know You” session. I’m guessing they stuck us in the cellar to keep the 60 rowdy college students from disturbing the other guests. Anyways, after a couple beers, we broke up into groups and each headed towards our own path. Luneburg is supposed to have the most pubs/inhabitant ratio in Germany, and second in Europe after Madrid, Spain, so there were plenty to choose from.

Next stop was Hausbar, a lounge type bar with extremely comfortable couches, a foosball table, great beer specials, and best of all, 50 cent shots! Our German buddy Sebastian, who was our guide on the crawl, explained that Wednesday nights were the nights for students to go out, where Friday and Saturday were for the working class, which explains the 50 cent shots. Interesting choice, considering waking up at 7 am for classes Thursday isn’t the easiest thing after staying out til 3 am drinking. To make the stop even better, just before we left, a guy from the bar and me beat Sebastian and Jillian in foosball and made them crawl under the table. I’ve never been good at foosball, so it gave me an accomplished feeling that brightened up my night even more.

The Old Dubliner was the next stop on our crawl. It was nice, because I noticed it the first night here, and have passed it many times, but never ventured in. Now I’m disappointed I hadn’t taken advantage of it before. After negotiating with the bouncer at the front door, we were able to get in for just a euro/person cover charge. Once inside, it was quite interesting. The pub has a patio over hanging the river, which unfortunately, was full. We went back inside just as karaoke was starting. Now, I’m not normally one for embarassing myself in front of dozens of other people, but for some reason, last night I had no problems with it. After several failed attempts to get one of the girls to do a duet with me, I finally convinced several people to go up with me. Derek, for whatever reason, HAD to sing “Sweet Caroline”, so that was the song we went with. I think we were by far the worst group up there that night, but it was still fun. Embarassing enough to say, I was even singing along with the people singing “Lucky” by Briney Spears, which Brittani promptly called me on. I think that was more embarassing than singing in front of dozens of people.

We finished up at September for another student deal, 12″ midnight pizzas for 2,50 Euros. We ended up meeting up with all the other groups from Malzer’s. The pizzas were pretty good, but I’m not sure if it really is good, or like White Castle which is only good when you’re drunk. Either way, it hit the spot. About 2am we figured it was time to get going. Theresa and I chose to walk back instead of taking a taxi. Well, she wanted to and I’m too big of a softy to complain. It was worth it though. I’m glad we did. We had a nice talk about our travel experiences and ambitions. It’s nice to meet people who have the same passion towards traveling as me. She’s even thinking about joining me on my trip to Morocco after school. Always a bonus to have a travel buddy.

As for today, I’m not exactly sure how I made it through classes. Actually I do, they have Sugar Free Red Bulls over here. A couple of those and I was ok. They’re starting to wear off though and I still have to study for my exam tomorrow. Better start on that….

Posted in General, Germany, Luneburg, School, Travel | No Comments »