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So sadly I left New York but with every intention to return. Next stage of my adventures….Europe. First stop, London. For a short few days I stayed with a friend of a family friend in Paddington, London. Mark was very kind to loan me his spare room for a few days, in which time I rarely left the house! It was good to have visited London before so not to feel guilty about not doing anything at all. I had in New York come down with a nasty virus of some sort which saw me coughing all day and all night, getting very little sleep and no doubt keeping the girls in my dorm awake all night. It was nice to have somewhere to recuperate for a few days and start the tedious job of uploading some photos onto the net. I ventured down Oxford street once for some fresh air, and apart from that my only outing was to St Mary’s Hospital A&E to see a Dr to reassure Mum it wasn’t Swine Flu. A 2.5hr wait to see the doc for 5 minutes to tell me that infact, I wasn’t going to die and that I just needed to rest up. Hmmm. Munich in a few days for Oktoberfest might not help…

So off I flew in a few short days still feeling a little worse for wear, to Munich. Super excited about meeting my girlfriends from uni there, Cass and Amelia, who had both been doing the Europe circuit over summer. We met at out ‘hostel’, rather aptly called the Tent… as this is basically all it was, a large semi-permanent tent with a thousand and one dodgy squeeky sagging bunk-beds filled with drunk Aussies sleeping off their sins. After a lot of squealing and lots of hugs the three of us were reunited after what seems like a lot longer than 3 months. We promptly went about finding a place to eat, and once we did, spent the next few hours chatting non-stop about all our travels.

Thankfully Cass and Mealz actually looked into what sightseeing there is to do in Munich, as opposed to me who thought we were there just to drink beer… it’s a good thing we only spent one night doing this I think. So we had two things on the list, Dachau concentration camp, and Nuchweinstein Castle. Dachau concentration camp we set off to on a guided tour which was excellent. The camp was the longest running camp of all if my memory serves correct. It was the first Nazi concentration camp in Germany, housing over 200,000 prisoners from 30 countries during its operation. The only word I could think of to use to describe what I felt in the first few moments walking through there was that it was disturbing. It’s very difficult to describe the emotion that comes over you. It was very sobering. We spent a few hours walking around the grounds, through the prison cells and guard’s quarters. We heard of some sickening accounts of abuse and torture, and stories of attempted escape. We read excerpts from diaries of the prisoners and accounts of their experiences in the camp.

You learn about these camps in history lessons at school… you can read about them in books and memoirs… but visiting one of these places is something else entirely. The emotions that went through me were a combination of sadness, disgust, nausea, anger, empathy… and shame… for knowing that human beings were capable of doing this to their own.

Wandering through the halls of this camp, there is an eerie atmosphere… Time has not allowed the terrible atrocities to become mere vague memories… it’s still feels very much as though it were yesterday. Which I suppose is not a bad thing, in order to not let society forget… in order to not let it happen again. Whish is exactly the theme of the memorials outside… simple words on a plaque stating ‘never again’. The most disturbing moment of this day was visiting the crematorium, which I don’t wish to write about in detail… but what I felt was just sickened. There isn’t any other way to describe it.

A few things we saw/learnt that were interesting and quite disturbing in themselves, were that what used to be the SS Barracks of the camp, which are closed to the public, are now used to train the Police. Kind of wrong, if you ask me. Secondly, one of the memorials outside in the yard is a plaque with the different coloured triangles used to distinguish the different types of prisoners… yellow for jewish, red for political, etc. But there were colours missing… pink, for the homosxuals, and green for the criminals. When the plaque was made the survivors of Dachau still didn’t want to be associated with these people… so their colours were not included. Which begs the question… has anything actually changed when it comes to attitude?

So we left Dachau thankful for having the opportunity to visit, but feeling somewhat depressed. It is certainly something I recommend to people to do if they can stomach it, it is not a nice experience, but it is well worth it.

The second sight we visited was Nuchweinstein Castle… the “Disney” castle set in the Bavarian mountains. Now I had been here once before with my family as a kid, but at the height of the tourist season there was a queue a mile long so we never saw the inside. So this was my opportunity. I had some rather great expectations, and they only grew after sitting on a train and bus for nearly three hours to get there. It looks quite beautiful perched there in the mountain side…
We took a horse and cart up, the driver of which took a liking to Amelia and spent the whole time flirting with her… note that he was about 70 years old and spoke little English! Cass and I spent the whole trip up giggling madly. When we got to the top we learnt the castle was built only in the 1800′s… but wasn’t finished because King Ludwig drowned. So the castle only has a few rooms open to the public, and they are all tack tack tack I tell you! I’m talking coloured glass beads made to look like jewels on massive copper chandelier things. All over the top and quite ridiculous. And then you go to the room where the throne should be and there isn’t one… cos he died. It’s just odd! So, Mum and Dad, don’t worry we didn’t miss out on much all those years ago! To top it off the place was covered in scaffolding, not a just a bit, but one whole facade top to toe… the side that you get magnificent photos of from a veiw point that we climbed up to. Anyhoo… at least it was a memorable day!

So apart from these sights and a bit of shopping around town, the rest of our time in Munich was devoted to, yep you guessed it, beer. We visited the Hoffbrauhaus (sp?) one night for dinner and I had the traditional pork knuckle with potato dumplings and saukraut and a Radler (=shandy) and we listened to some quality big German band beer music. The place is so massive you can get lost in it, and it was bustling with an boistrous atmosphere that I’m not sure if it is always like this or is excentuated by Oktoberfest. I also want to note here… the beer maidens that serve you in these places and at the festival, are some super strong women… my God! I’m talking at leat 6 steins in hand at all times… they are some strong wrists! I also want to point out my amusement at the local taditional get-up, the dresses and lederhausen… i never realised they actually wear these things for reasons other than tourism… but aparently they do! The boys love getting into their suede capri overalls on the weekends for a beer… cute!

Which brings me to… Oktoberfest. After trawling around the stores for days to find the apporiate bust enhancing beer maiden dress for Amelia, we found one suitable, got her dressed up, and set about meeting up with an Aussie friend of the girls Joel, and a German wearing his lederhausen (sp?), a friend of Mealz’s, Phillip. And then we hit the tents. We managed to find a possie in amongst some locals at the Augustina tent and i ordered my first stein, which surprisingly i didn’t find too difficult to get through. Many a ‘Prost!’ were said with the slamming down of stein glasses… it was all very merry! The elderly men sitting next to us certainly didn’t hold back their excitement… horny old buggers! And from Merry it quickly turned to very messy when we decided to move on to a tent which I can’t remember the name off and remember very little of. I do remember about 10,000 people dancing on tables which we promptly joined in with… and a third stein later resulted in my bottom meeting table as i slipped and fell… Table 1, Kate 0. Dammit. My bum still hurts to this day. The rest of the night is a serious blur…I remember sausages, saukraut, hot chips, a massive gingerbread heart, and a sore bottom. But thanks to German purity laws ensuring their beer only has 4 ingredients, my head wasn’t too bad the next day! The next night we returned to the grounds to see it sober, went on the ferris wheel, ate some more sausage and saukraut ( i never want to see cabage again) and took some photos that we were too intoxicated to do the night before. I must mention here too, the number of Aussie blokes who, normaly so stingey, actually forked out in excess of 100euro for lederhausen, all cos it involves getting pissed…typical! And of course we had a laugh at the drunken messy people and wondered if we were so bad the night before… i have sneaking suspicions we were…

And what did I learn from Oktoberfest? That i had a ripper of a time and intend to go back next year. Prost!!