Munich, Germany

The king of Oktoberfest. This giant from Westchester, NY stood up and chugged 7 mugs of beer over the course of a few hours in the Hofbrauhaus tent. That's 19.6 12oz. beers in American measuring. Unreal. (See the video at the bottom of the post)
The security at Oktoberfest was pretty tight. I saw no fights. No one wanted to mess with this dude. The security guys were pretty calm though; they threw out "The King" after he chugged his seventh liter, but they guided him gently toward the door, and allowed him to stop for applause, autographs and pictures on the way out.
That's AM on the watch. First beer of the day, 9:43am. The tent was full by 9:25am and they closed the doors. Go early, or go home.
The Hofbrauhaus tent holds up to 6,896 drunk people at any given moment.
Aaron's friends Dave, Rob, and Jake have unusual travel habits. The actually took a taxi from Prague to meet us in Munich. The fare was only $500. This caused them to miss day 1. This picture is from Day 2. They showed up late, after door-closing time on the morning of day 3, so they missed that day too. Rob snuck in somehow, despite being abandoned at an ATM, and left penniless by Dave and Jake.
Hofbrau is the "foreigners tent" It's also the rowdiest tent, and the tent where English is the common language.
Dirndls and lederhosen
For day 2, Aaron and I bought these traditional Bavarian checkered shirts. A majority of people at Oktoberfest wear lederhosen and dirndls, and we felt a bit left out, so for 20 euro we at least had the right shirts.
Our hotel was very close by the Weisn, only a fifteen minute walk away. It was located in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. So every night we saw the strange mixture of hundreds of hammered people walking down our street past hundreds of disapproving Muslim men. Great place to get a kabob at midnight. The guy on the left did NOT want to be in our picture, but he couldn't back away quick enough.


This is the king, standing up on a table to chug his 4th and 5th liters of beer of the day.

Berlin, Germany

We were interested to see how the Germans have memorialized WWII. The Holocaust Memorial was particularly moving. The stone columns of varying size clearly resembled gravestones, but with a beautiful yet haunting simplicity. We spent a while walking among the columns, and found that once you get to the center, they reach heights of over 7 feet, thus completely surrounding you.
Berlin has almost no monuments of any kind mentioning WWII. Germany has outlawed any public denial of the Holocaust, and also the sale of any Nazi memorobilia. It stuck me as a city with no history, as if it just rose from the ashes in 1945, and doesnt want to think about anything that happened before then.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, all Soviet monuments on the east side of the city have been dismantled as well. That makes East Berlin a city trying to erase 50 years of history.
Checkpoint Charlie still stands and there is even a guy dressed as an East German soldier who will stamp your passport for 2 euros.
It can be difficult to tell where the wall once stood. Since East Berlin was so economically backward under communist rule, it's ugly soviet style concrete apartments have been the first buildings to be demolished and replaced by stylish new architecture. Berlin is still a city spread out among many different neighborhoods with empty space, parks, and loads of graffiti in between. Tiegarten Park was wonderful, probably the best major city park for running Ive ever seen.

Berlin, Germany

We got our first experience with discount airlines today. We flew out of Stansted Airport on Air Berlin for the fantastic price of $60 one way. The down side is that there is no way to get to Stansted airport, 50 miles out of central London, by 6am, other than hiring a taxi. A $90 taxi fare later, we arrived at Stansted. The terminal was littered with backpackers sleeping on benches and on the floor, apparently overnight after getting there on the last bus the previous night. While at Stansted Lindsey's Mastercard would be copied by a shoe store employee, her identity stolen, and $5500 in fraudulent charges rung up within 48 hours. We did not discover this until two weeks later, when on a rainy afternoon in Romania, I decided to check our statement online. Luckily the good people at Citibank refunded us the full amount. Whew!


Blissfully unaware of our credit card problems, we flew to Berlin. While London certainly saw a lot of destruction during the blitz, WWII completely obliterated Berlin. Other than one half-destroyed church left standing as a reminder of the past, every building in Berlin is lass than 60 years old. The giant crane is definitely the official bird of Berlin.