Bavarian Blowout!

+++THIS BLOG COMES WITH A PARENTAL ADVISORY STICKER+++
please do not judge your children based on the events of this entry!

Well the weekend kicked off with a different kind of sausage fest to what we were expecting when our 8am flight left London for Munich with the whole of two female passengers, yours truly and the fabulous Bec Weber! Before we had even taken off the flight attendant had been publicly harassed, two bloody Marys had been split (not by us) and a variety of songs sung, needless to say it was the rowdiest flight we had ever been on and we knew the weekend was just going to be plain messy!!!! After an hour and a half of sing-a-longs, we arrived in Munich. A short but interesting bus ride to the terminal saw one of the fairer sex debate if fly spray could really kill rats and a short train ride from there got us to our hostel.

Unable to check in we dumped bags and made a beerline (get it, BEERline!) for the Oktoberfest grounds. The first day saw as arrive promptly at the Hofbrauhaus at around 1ish to have lunch and our first stein. Upon arrival I devised a wonderful game where we all adopted German names and if you failed to call another by their CORRECT name you were forced to drink and the one who caught you created a new rule.... and so, Leslie, Anya, Lord Ludwig and Fritz were born. By the end of the afternoon we were rising for Lord Ludwig, using elbows or heads to point and giving the double guns anytime we asked for another round! As well as one rule that involved a slightly interesting discussion with some men in kilts as to whether they were 'true Scotsmen!' A good introductory day was had, of which we can slightly remember. We piled into bed at a reasonable hour to prepare to the next days onslaught!

Day 2 saw two fake Frauleins play dress up and head once more into the abyss of drinking and debauchery. After a quick side step past the crowds we easily entered the Paulander tent, avoiding the Italian stallion wannabes from the previous days line up, only to be seated beside a group of 65 who could only speak broken English and constantly cried out "çiao bella!!!" at every opportunity! After a few *cough*million*cough* beers we called it a day. So drunk and disorderly we unfortunately lost our way on the 10 minute walk back to the hostel. Instead of bickering as to whose fault it was we decided to board a cheap tube ride to central Munich. When we finally arrived at the hostel we had a quick disco nap, changed and headed into town for an amazing pork knuckle with a side of JW beer, little to say Mr J Wyatt was very excited!

On our final day at theresienweise we rose early as we wanted to avoid the massive queues to enter tents and make the most of our final drinking hours. Once at the grounds we were surprised to find there were no queues, and even more surprisingly... no free tables. So we saddled up to some friendly English lads and settled in for a day of drinking! Kicking off at 10am we ended up staying to see the tent close at around 11pm but not before we had danced ourselves off tables, were flashed by scots men, had been harassed by locals, been on the oompa stage, lost our table, won back our table, had Bec Weber show us her happy feet and some of us drank some questionable beer! We then headed home via a few of the rides including a roller coaster and the spinning swings and surprisingly neither of us ended up driving the porcelin bus!

Our last day saw us rise to the tune of 'beer, beer, give me another beer' ringing in our ears thanks to Jarratt. We decided to spend our remaining time exploring the town, watching the glock that rocks and having one final pork knuckle lunch at Hitler's old haunt to Hofbrauhuse. Only to close out our time in Munich watching the hours tick by at Munich airport.

Too easy, stein anyone?

Drunk and disorderly

Wenches and their men!!!

Best of the Wurst!

We left the house for Berlin last Saturday at the ridiculously early hour of 4:30am (!) in order to make the most of our May Day long weekend. When we arrived in Berlin we were tired but excited, we found our hostel relatively easily despite bus strikes as I had stayed there before. We checked in, stored our bag in the left luggage room and made a bee line for the TV tower and Alexanderplatz. We had been blessed with an amazing day and thought what better way to kick start our time in Berlin then high above its skyline within the TV Tower. Unfortunately, the entire population of Berlin had, had the same idea and after 15 minutes of not moving in the line we felt our time would be better spent wandering down to Check point Charlie before our 3pm walking tour.

At Checkpoint Charlie we took all the standard pictures, had our first currywurst and read most of the information displayed around what had originally been the death strip before heading to Hackerscher Markt for our 4 hour walking tour. Our walking tour was amazing (despite one very annoying New Zealander who couldnt help asking mundane, pointless questions), our tour covered most of the significant sights of Berlin including the Muesum Island, Bebelplatz, Gendarmenmarkt, Checkpoint Charlie, Hitler's Bunker, The Holocast Memorial and ending at the amazing Brandenburg Tor. At the conclusion of the tour J and I rolled around the corner for a quick happy snap at Reinstag before starting our walk back to Hackerscher Markt where we had a traditional Berlin dinner; pork meatballs for bec, and another currywurst for J. We then headed back to the hostel bar where we washed down our meals with some good ol' fashioned draft German ale.

The next morning we had a bit of a sleep in (finally bec won one!!!) and headed out to the east side gallery at around 9ish. There we were treated to the 1.3km stretch of the wall decorated by artists from around the world, particularly favourites (despite the graffiti) were Test the Best and The Kiss. Afterwards we headed to the Checkpoint Charlie muesum where we learnt all about the escape attempts and J was able to satisfy his passport stamp fetish by paying a few euro for all the stamps from the time of the wall. We then continued on to the Topography of Terror Muesum before returning to the Holocast memorial for some pretty inappropriate photos. From there a quick tube ride saw us travel to the last preserved section of the death strip and visit to the DDR muesum, where J got to sit in a Trabi car and see some boobies in an exhibit without any explanation! We then ended our busy day with a few beers at Bec's beloved ampleman bar before eating the most amazing steak at a Berlin chain known as the blockhouse.

We rose early on our final day in order to make our 9am breakfast reservation at the Reinstag restaurant, only to arrive, be seated and then ignored! I blame J's jeans! Hehe. However, making the reservation did help us to skip the enormous queue of people waiting to enter, something a strongly advise you do if wishing to visit the Reinstag. Afterward, we headed down to Pariser Platz for breakfast and contemplated what we would do for the rest of the day. In the end we decided to visit Postdamer Platz via the Holocast memorial and finish with a leisurely cruise of the River Spree. We spent our last hour in the sun, drinking Berliner's at ampleman bar, what more could you want?

At checkpoint Charlie (West Berlin side)

First of the wurst.... ;)

At the Brandenburg Tor.

Being silly....

Us at the east side gallery - Test the Best is the artwork!

Inappropriate photo from the Holocast Memorial

and another.

Out the front of the Reinstag

Inside the glass dome of the Reinstag - Can you spot us?

Bec at Ampleman Bar! I tried desperately to get J to buy me one of these deck chairs, but at 40 euro and the difficult task of getting it home he won that argument!