Back on the train, and again a nice journey through the country side, seeing brief glimpses of Linz and Salzburg brefore arriving at Munich. Checking in at the hostel before walking into town for a bite to eat, check out the Glockenspiel and making sure we had a bike tour organised to join for the day.

Only really had the next day to re-explore Munich as last time was a haze from Oktoberfest. So the bike tour gave us another good foothold in the city. Coolest thing was in the local river, they had set up an underwater ramp which made a wave the locals surfed on. It was pretty impressive. This tour went a tad longer then the one in Vienna due to the hour+ stop at a beer hall for some stiens. Natrually there were some young American college students doing a semester overseas and travelling first - so we managed to get the two of them into a drinking competition with the 1ltr stiens. results varied, but the remainder of the bike tour was a bit of a write off. So we decided to do a pub crawl that night. I also managed to talk my two dorm buddies Faye and Haley into joining the pub crawl which stopped me waking them up early in the morning. The tour was pretty good, 15 for all your could drink for an hour with a number of shots throughout the night. We got a bit of the beer history and visited some major beer halls.

That pretty much wrapped up the quick 10 day trip, Marie continued on and is still travelling before heading back to Canada. And I am back to London and back to work!

Prost! The German equivalent of cheers, is accompanied by a sometimes stein shattering clashing of beer mugs. You could barely go a few minutes with a beer in your hand without someone tapping you on the shoulder and yelling Prost! in your facing, forcing another swig.

The main purpose of our trip was to head see and experience Beerfest. The festival is in Munich, about 1.5 hours from our Austrian chalet. We headed in early on Saturday morning for the opening of the festival. Although we got their a couple of hours before the official start (at 12pm, with the mayor ceremonially tapping the first keg) it was very hard to find a seat. There are 13 beer halls, each sitting about 6,000 (about 78,000 people seated at once. About 7 million people go to the festival over the 3 weeks and consume 3.8 million litres of beer. Although you might think that’s only 1/2 a litre each, for the Germans it is a family event and I am guessing at least 1/4 of the people are non-drinking kids) and you will only get served if you are sitting. On our 4th or 5th search of a beer hall, we found some seats outside in one of the beer gardens with some strangers.

At 12, we heard a big boom in the distance, and a cheer went up. The beer started the flow. A couple of minutes later, our lovely Fraulein carrying about 10 steins came to our table. This is no mean feat, each stein has 1 litre of beer in it, and each stein weighs about 1.2kg (we 'acquired' a couple and weighed them at home). So these are some tough ladies. The beer is purposely brewed just for the festival, it has no preservatives and tastes very good. The beers alcohol content is about 6-7%, but even for non-hardcore drinkers like Carmen and myself, we found it extremely easy to drink.

After we had quenched our initial thirst with our new mates, we meet some Ozzies, some newly drunk Japanese tourists and some locals. The Germanys spoke a little English, and we learnt some new phrases, like 'mein lederhosen ist kaput', 'Shiezen hausen', 'Schlumpa'. The meanings of the last two we will leave up to the read to find the meaning although we might have the spelling completely wrong. The opening day, was very much a Germany festival, with almost everyone wearing their traditional lederhosen, and outfits. We felt like we had turned up to a fancy dress party and we were the only ones not dressed up. It was very cool to see, just made us feel underdressed.

Apart from the 13 beer tents, there is a wine tent and a number of schnapps bars for those not included to drink beer. There were numerous food outlets, we became regular visitors to the chicken outlet which served up roasted 1/2 chickens, and vendors which sold chocolate covered fruit. There is also a whole fair ground with carnival rides attached. All the rides putting New Zealand ones to shame, all going very fast, obviously trying to bring those recently downed steins back up. Another very big Germany speciality is the pretzel, they are big, taste great and are cheap.

At any event where the sole purpose is to serve large quantities of beer, it has its casualties. There was a constant stream of medics coming in and out of the grounds, people passed out of the banks, the odd person throwing up, many stumbling around. It all made the atmosphere.

As the days turned into evenings, and people had a few more drinks, people started getting on the tables tops and getting down with the local 'Oompah' bands - very cool atmospheres. Every third or fourth song is the Oktoberfest drinking song, we don't know what it translates to, but you hear it all the time and it ends with a big skull of beer.

Ein prozit, Ein Prozit
Der Gamoot Leek Kite
Ein prozit, Ein Prozit
Der Gamoot Leek Kite
Ein, Swei, Drei, Sufra...PROST!!

With such events, everyone wants a souvenir, and a free one is better than a bought one, so as such, after a few drinks everyone thinks it is a good idea to try and leave the festival with a stein (or two, or three). What we noticed was all the signs saying 'do not steal the steins' were in English. Apparently there is very little crime in Germany/Austria and everyone leave things unlocked (our chalet had no locks on any of the doors). Anyway, we and most of our bus managed to get a souvenir, and one girl got 3, got arrested and went to jail for a few hours. A good laugh all round :+)

See the other Oktoberfest pictures here

The day after the opening of Oktoberfest, we headed off to see something completely different at Dachau Concentration Camp. The camp is now a memorial site and although it isn't complete, you get the general idea of what the layout would've been. The sign at entrance of the grounds (which would've been the entrance used by the prisoners) translates to 'work makes free', giving those admitted a false hope for the future.

It was set up in 1933, only a few weeks after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor as a camp for political prisoners, and all later camps were modelled from this one. The photos and video footage in the museum showed horrific images of over-crowding, starvation and death. The overcrowding of the barracks (which are completely gone, with only the foundations remaining) are a strong example of the terrible conditions, originally designed to accomodate 200 prisoners in each of the 30 buildings, up to 2000 prisoners resided in each. The sick bays also housed death chambers and areas for medical experiments.

The most sobering parts for me were the crematorium and gas chambers. The crematorium had to be built as the number of deaths was to high to send the victims to other camps to be cremated, however the photos of bodies outside show that these onsite furnaces could not deal with demand either. The room immediately before the crematorium was the gas chamber which was built for mass extermination, however for some reason (that no-one seems to know) it was never used. The sign above the door translates to 'shower-bath' and the room houses drains in the floor and shower nozzles in the ceiling.

The prisoners were liberated in 1943 by American troops, but many did not make it through the last few days under SS men command. Records show that over 200,000 people were held prisoners and over 43,000 died, however it is thought that the numbers were much greater as not all prisoners were recorded.