After arriving back to London from Switzerland, it was head down with work and house hunting.
Work-wise, I got settled in to my job at Law Firm, a huge law firm in the city.
House-wise, I was excited to decide to find a place with my friends J and A. We ended up finding large apartment on Clapham Road, in a really cool and happening part of South London. Possibly not the most original choice for a bunch of Aussies (because Clapham is full of Australians) but very exciting nevertheless!
In terms of travel, things have slowed down a bit as I concentrated on work and house hunting, but I still managed a long weekend away to Oktoberfest in Germany.
Some friends and I headed to Gatwick airport on the first Friday afternoon in October and boarded a flight to Salzburg in Austria.
At Salzburg we were picked up by the Alpenrider team and taken to a small Austrian town in the mountains. This would be our home for the long weekend, in the Alpenrider chalet. This was a chalet owned and run by an Aussie and his Austrian wife, with a seasonal crew of young Aussie backpackers. The first night was spent by settling in with the aid of a few beers. We were also issued with our Mission Oktoberfest uniforms, consisting of t-shirts and dog tags.
Sue and I had travelled with V, a friend of my friend Jen from previous travel adventures. We also met up with Jen's friend Charlotte and her friend Teresa. Together we were 2 Aussies, 2 Kiwis and 2 Canadians. The next morning we got up while it was still dark, had breakfast and boarded a bus with the rest of the guests and crew and bussed it over the German border into Munich in time for 9am for the beer festivities to start.
Oktoberfest was everything I expected it to be, and more. Basically it is a site in Munich dedicated to the beer festival, with lots of giant beer tents which are put up every year. Giant tent is a bit of an understatement. They are massive beer halls made from metal, wood and canvas, not some mere garden marquee. Surrounding the tents is a huge festival site full of various rides, stalls and other entertainment. Surprisingly, it actually is good to go on a rollercoaster with multiple loops after drinking beer all day. I guess the rides also keep the kids entertained whilst their parents are drinking beer inside.
The party was already well under way at 9:30 am and the beer tents filling up quickly. Luckilly our group had managed to get some tables thanks to some good organisation by the Chevy, the Alpenrider owner. The day involved sitting at the table and drinking 1 litre glasses of specially brewed beer. Then standing on the seats and doing the same, and eventually standing and dancing on the tables doing the same. It sounds crazy but you just get taken with the atmosphere of it all, whilst watching the live folky German brass band play.
The best thing is the locals, instead of getting fed up with the hordes of drunk Aussies, just embrace the visitors and party with them happily.
We were kicked out of our beer tent at 4:30pm and went on the rides and continued drinking at some of the outside bars. At night fall our coach took us back over the border to Austria and our Alpenrider sanctuary.
Next day: repeat. Back to Munich to start at 9am at another beer tent. This was a bit of a struggle after the beer drinking of the day before, but by midday the beer was once again going down very well. This time we weren't kicked out of our tent, and the day got quite messy, and the drinking continued all the way back to the chalet back in Austria.
So, how do you refresh yourself from a drunken daze and re-enter the world of sobriety after 2 days of drinking litres of beer, one after another? Simple: you jump off a cliff into a canyon, into almost freezing water. The highlight of the last day of the trip was the canyoning activity. Stepping off a 7 meter cliff into dark cold water is scary. The canyoning also involved jumping down waterfalls, abseiling, swimming, climbing and sliding down the river all to navigate through a canyon. It was an adventure and a perfect way to wake back up to life after a drunken daze. That night, on the flight back to London (which we almost missed - who would have thought alpine Austria had traffic jams?) we had a few more drinks and all slept very well upon returning to our London beds.
