Ethiopia - Bahir Dar, Gondar and Axum - Northern Historical Circuit

Alright, so due to poor planning all flights in and out of Lalibela were booked up for this week, so we’ll be taking a separate trip there at the end of November. However, in the past four days, we certainly covered a lot of northern Ethiopia!

Our whirlwind adventure first took us into Bahir Dar, the city on the southern banks of Lake Tana. Lake Tana is one of the biggest lakes in Africa and takes 8-9 hours to cross by ferry boat. It is also home to over 37 monasteries. Of those 37, only 3 are open to women (because we can’t keep secrets, we were told!), so we visited two of them, Debra Mariam and the women’s island nunnery. And against all our instilled instincts not to touch ancient artefacts, before we knew what was happening, a 900 year old sheepskin bible was plunked into our laps for our exploration. It was written in Geez, the oldest language in Ethiopia which is almost Aramaic and which neither of us can read, but thankfully it was illustrated so we could guess whether we were looking at Luke or Mark’s gospel. I held a 900 year old book! And was mostly terrified I would damage it the whole time.



We later played the musical stone slabs at Debra Mariam and learned about Ethiopian Orthodox religious practices and saints, such as the man totally covered in hair who communed with animals or Pantaleon who stood for 48 years leaning on his prayer stick. Lake Tana is also the source of the Blue Nile river and home to pelicans, lammergeyer eagles, hippos, crocodiles and local men trying to find a fereng (foreign) wife for their sons.

We also road-tripped to Tis Abay, the Blue Nile Falls. It had been a bit of a dilemma deciding whether or not to go since there are two hydro plants that divert much of the water turning the falls into a wee trickle down a hill, but our guides Haile and Nebu assured us that one of the plants was broken, so the falls would be in reasonable awesomeness that day.



After a very quiet stroll through the savannah countryside for about twenty minutes, we very suddenly heard the gushing of the water and the field fell away from us on the right side, revealing a steep cliff escarpment and very impressive waterflow pouring over the side along the Blue Nile River. The excessive spray off the falls earned it the name of Tis Abay (Water that Smokes).



And it was awesome! Not as big as Niagara, but certainly the surrounding scenery beats out the tacky casinos and arcades that adorn Niagara Falls.

Our next stop was Gondar, one of the important military strongholds of the country over the centuries. The highlight of Gondar is the Royal Enclosure, a compound of the castles of four generations of Ethiopia’s kings and queens on 1 square km of land. Mehron and I greatly enjoyed re-enacting sword and staff fights around the grounds as our tour guide looked on, completely unimpressed with our immaturity. Whatever. We had a good time. One cool fact about these kings and queens was that they kept personal prides of Abyssinian lions as companions. Kind of shows up the First Dog in the White House a bit. LIONS.



While in town, we also breezed by the Debra Birhane Selassie Church, the Sistine Chapel of Ethiopia, where the ceiling is completely painted with angels by one artist monk way back in the day. When we wrapped that up, we stopped by Sofa Juice for refreshment and thereby consumed the greatest juice on the planet, mango-guava-lime. YUM.

And then it was 12:30pm and we were kind of done with Gondar, so we hooked ourselves up with a half day trip to the Simien Mountains to Kosoye, a lookout once visited by Queen Elizabeth II in her horseback riding days. Well worth the hour long drive on very bumpy dusty road with a soundtrack of Shania and Snoop Dogg to see the fabulous views and spot baboons rustling in the valley below!



On the way back, we stopped in at the former Falasha village (diaspora of Ethiopian Jews who were repatriated to Israel during Mengistu’s regime) where we checked out a very cool local coop project of handicrafts and attended a proper coffee ceremony with fresh roasted coffee and popcorn. Whenever I ask why popcorn is served with the coffee ceremony, I get the same answer: Tradition.



On our way out of Gondar at 5am (all the domestic flights go early and have tight security requiring us to arrive at least 2 hours before the flights), we saw a number of odd things. In the pitch blackness, there was some excellent stargazing. But better was the people watching... we saw three men practicing kick boxing on the highway. And then we saw mobs of ghosts emerging from the misty woods as dawn began to break... all the locals were on their way to church, completely wrapped in the traditional white blankets called gabis, creating a very eerie effect as they moved through the trees with no lights.

Axum was our last port of call and we were there for two reasons: 1) to see the re-Erection (Ethiopia’s wording, not mine) of the Stele returned from Rome at the millennium and 2) to see the Ark of the Covenant. When we arrived to the Yeha Hotel, and saw the entire town from the restaurant’s hilltop view, we realized we might have a lot of spare time on our hands. So after a power nap, we walked down the hill to the main stelae field. We were told it was a field of over 75 stelae commemorating the deaths of the great kings and nobles of Axum. What we saw was 7 stelae in a yard. So we opted to look at them from outside the gate instead of paying the entry fee to stand on the other side of the fence.





Sadly the same thing happened when we investigated the compound housing the Ark of the Covenant. You pay an entrance fee to stand outside the same buildings you can stand outside next to the gate, since of course, women aren’t allowed inside. In the case of Axum, they haven’t let women into the churches since the 10th century, when one lady ruined it for all the rest of us. The Falasha Queen Yodit burned most of ancient Axum to the ground, and they’ve held it against the female sex ever since.

To be fair though, men aren’t allowed to the see the Ark, the Holy of Holies, either... only the high priests are allowed inside and the guardian outside descends from the same family who has guarded the Ark for generations. So we admired the building housing the Ark from outside the gate as well.

The real highlight of Axum was the high level of interaction with the locals. Mehron really got into the swing of bargaining, talking a shopkeeper down in price for twenty minutes for some amber necklaces. And on our walk through town, a gaggle of schoolgirls swarmed us eager to practice their English and show us their school and tell us about Axum and they were completely adorable and charming.

Also, I’m going to Egypt on Tuesday for two weeks. Surprise!

Ethiopia – Addis Ababa – New Flower, Old Everything Else

Addis Ababa means “new flower” in English, and this New Flower is the capital of one very old country. Addis got its name through King Menelik II’s wife, who found a new flower growing where the Sheraton now stands in the city, and coined the name of the city after the discovery. Although that discovery was new, most famous discoveries made in Ethiopia are of very old things. Perhaps most famously and most old is Lucy (so named because Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was playing at the dig campsite just after the discovery), the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found by Dr. Leakey, who was found in Ethiopia’s swath of the Great Rift Valley. Also found here was Selam (“Peace”), the oldest child hominid ever found. The Great Rift Valley has yielded bones of human ancestors that are anywhere from 200,000 to 10 million years old. Like I said, Ethiopia is OLD.





Also, did you know that Ethiopia is home to the Ark of the Covenant? It is kept under lock and key by the Orthodox high priests in Axum in the north. Axum used to be a major center of the ancient kingdom of Abyssinia, ruled over by the Queen of Sheba. We have been told that King Menelik I, who was the son of King Solomon of Jerusalem and the Queen of Sheba, brought it here from Jerusalem for safekeeping way back in the day. Mehron and I will go to high five the guards of its resting place when we take our trip up north to see Lalibela later this month, since I highly doubt they’re going to let just anyone waltz in there to see it, especially the annoying crazy Canadian girls who are humming the Indiana Jones theme song as loud as they can while they pretend to be awesome archaeologist-adventurers! You think I’m joking. But I really really love Indiana Jones.

Ethiopia is also the birthplace of two very cool things that have equally been around forever. 1) Coffee, which originates from Kaffa in the south. I had my first coffee here in Addis at Peacock, a coffeeshop that is an institution in this city. The waiters are lifers; they are all about a hundred years old and they know their business. I don’t like coffee, but this isn’t coffee, it’s Mekyato (Amharic rendition of macchiato) and it’s worth a try. 2) The Nile. World mystery solved: the source of the Nile is here. Lake Tana is the spring of the Blue Nile, which we will also be seeing on our roadtrip north. Wicked!

Here’s a little more on day to day happenings in Addis… we seem to get invitations and have errands to run every day, so we really don’t lack for things to do. Last week Mehr and I and some of her family attended the screening of three short films being presented at Alliance Francaise. The first film was in Dutch and left us confused as to what had happened. The second movie was a dreadful melodramatic South African piece that would have put a telenovela to shame. And the third (the one we really went to see) was a very well done story about an Ethiopian man trying to survive the days of the Derg (the communist dictatorship that ruled Ethiopia from the 1970s to 1991), but it had a very unsatisfying ending.

And somehow at the end of the evening, we wound up meeting an Ethiopian movie star who invited us to the premiere of his new movie, A Guy’s Thing 2 (sequel to the bestselling A Guy’s Thing). We ended up going and despite the movie being entirely in Amharic, I found it really funny because it was mostly physical comedy and you could piece the plot together by all the angry pregnant ladies running around.



We also attended (though did not participate) in the Great Ethiopian Run, a 10km marathon around Addis with 30,000 participants at 10,000 ft of elevation. It was something to see...



Another evening we met up with one of Mehr’s mom’s friends who was in town from Nairobi with two interns. We wandered around exploring the shops in Piassa, the main window shopping district (so many jewelry stores!) before we went for dinner at Castelli’s which is famous for having hosted Brangelina for dinner when they adopted Zahara and for having the world’s rudest owners. We did not see Brad or Angie at dinner and the hosts were astonishingly rude, but the food was delish and the waitstaff were really great. Eg: when introducing ourselves, they responded with “Holly? Like Holi-day? Ohhh, like Holly-wood!”. Or better yet to Mehr, “I knew you were Ethiopian… you’re too beautiful not to be!” So funny.

Our other major restaurant outing was to Fasika with Mehr’s relatives to see some Ethiopian dancing. After going back and forth on whether we would need reservations and whether it would be better to go to another place called Habesha, we found ourselves front and center in the restaurant with the dancers and the band. I have no idea what half the things I ate were, as we all shared a communal injera plate of twenty different kinds of meat and vegetable sauces, but they were tasty. The dancing was the real highlight though… Ethiopian dance focuses on the shoulders and at times, I had to wonder if they have extra joints up there to accomplish some of their moves. And at one point, one woman mindblowingly spun her head such that I was sure it would go flying off.



Ouch. Amazing. Also, Mehr’s dad definitely got into a dance-off with one of the male dancers, so after that, we knew it was time to call it a night!

The other major event of the last week was Fidel’s birthday party, which he throws on Mount Entoto with tents and food and horse races and the whole nine yards. Every year, 50 or 60 people show up and party on the mountain with him for the afternoon and we were invited. They race all the horses, they eat, they drink, they laugh, then they go home all merry.

Unfortunately, I did not get to do any of those things because I had to go and get food poisoning on the morning of the party. Clever.

Ethiopia - Addis Ababa - Welcome to Africa. It's Just Like The Movies.

When my puddlejumper plane landed on the tarmac at the Addis Ababa airport at 4am, I had no idea what I should expect. Let’s face it... most of my knowledge of Africa derives from The Lion King.
Mehr had promised to pick me up at that unfortunate hour of the morning, and I was greatly relieved to spot her sleepy but cheerful face awaiting me in the arrival area. We followed the dirt path out to the parking lot, a gravelly square filled with dozing pack animals, wandering goats and antelopes and motorcycles. Mehr whistled at one gossiping driver who disdainfully looked our way before rallying our three camels. Oh my goodness. Holly on a camel at 4am sounds like all kinds of trouble!

Just kidding. Our driver actually brought a rickshaw around to take us home. And I can already tell you that Africa will be a whole different kind of travel experience on this trip. It’s everything you might have imagined it to be... For example, Mehron’s dad lives in a traditional but large mud hut just outside the capital city on the school compound, closer to a village called Mbutu than to Addis Ababa. There is one big communal room that is the kitchen/dining room/living room, two smaller bedrooms off the sides, and a scary, dark outhouse in the yard (thankfully not too close to the encroaching jungle... we all know how good I am with wildlife!), which is also home to the bucket shower stall. This will require some getting used to, to say the least. As a bonus, we are serenaded to sleep at night by the shrill neighbourhood zebras who I am told are participating in the Great Migration south to Kenya. At least it isn’t hyenas, I guess. Because zebras and other typical African animals are endangered species in Ethiopia, Mehr’s dad isn’t allowed to try and scare them along their way. They should be all migrated and gone by next week, I’m told.

There is a wood stove in the big room to do all the cooking, which turns the house into a bit of a giant oven when combined with the hot African sun beating down on the roof. We eat almost only Ethiopian food because Western food imports are crazy expensive here and can only be obtained via the black market. Ethiopian food is great, but they are very proud of being the origin of coffee.



This pride results in the use of coffee grounds as seasoning in the dishes, such as coffee-marinated chicken, coffee rice and coffee-sprinkled pizza. I cannot say I enjoy the coffee pizza, and I got more than a few strange looks when I asked for my pizza “buna alfelegim” (I don’t want coffee). I better not tell them I don’t drink coffee...

Many people thought I would get bored here, but it turns out we have tons to do. I first had to be presented to the local neighbourhood community at a formal ceremony presided over by the village elders. It was like a scene out of a movie. They gathered in front of our house at sunset and I was introduced by the chief in a very elabourate speech in Amharic, the main language of Ethiopia, which referred to my ancestry and accomplishments. I was careful to be especially polite to the local witch-doctor, a very small and wise old man whose only English sentence is the Nike slogan “Just Do It”. He gave me a nyala (antelope) horn for good luck. I don’t think it’s going to fit in my backpack. I was later told that he liked me so much that he privately sacrificed a goat in my honour that night.

Mehr took me out to the current hotspot, a club called Tropicana, to relax after the evening’s formalities. Turns out that Tropicana is also the favourite hang-out of the slightly sinister men of power in Ethiopia who wear sunglasses at night, the flamboyantly dressed nouveau riche here and the khaki-clad expat community. There were really great African beats playing though, so we stayed for a good while just to listen and people-watch. And just when I was least expecting it, a birthday cake was brought out with my name on it and the entire bar, including Ethiopia’s top sniper (a woman a year younger than me!), sang me Happy Birthday. Mehr and her dad were looking very satisfied with themselves and rightly so... who expects a surprise party a week after their birthday?! Well played, Torrans family, well played.

I awoke hot and sweaty the next morning to the scarlet fireball sun burning holes through my eyelids through the open window of our room. Mehr and I trekked across the hot and dusty school compound to the school building, a giant sweltering gymnasium with a grass and sand floor. There are some computers and other everyday technology available in Addis Ababa, but the school is far enough outside that it does not have reliable electricity so the teachers and students work with chalk and slate, or even sticks and sand. When we weren’t helping the kids do their math problems, we were the unofficial lunch monitors, patrolling the yard to make sure the kids didn’t fall in the well and chasing off the grabby monkeys who hassled the kids for their lunches.

So there’s a little slice of living in Africa for you... As for what’s next, we’ve had plenty of invitations we’re keen to take up, so in the next few weeks we will be going on safari on the savannah plains to try our hands at spearfishing, warrior campfire dancing, camel herding and elephant tracking.

Okay, not really. April Fool’s! Nobody expects an April Fool's prank in October...

Actual Africa

After a long day on and off of planes between Vienna, Cairo and Addis Ababa, I finally arrived to Ethiopia at the early hour of 3:30am. Even though I was one of the first people off the plane, I was definitely the last person out of customs and immigration. This was because I couldn’t find the visa on arrival office and was redirected by the immigration officer to a broom closet with a paper sign taped up on the door listing the prices of tourist visas, where the man behind the desk ever-so-carefully copied my information onto the visa sticker, peeled and inserted it into my passport, decided it wasn’t tidy enough and redid it. He was this thorough with each passenger, so thankfully there was only one woman in front of me, with him dedicating twenty minutes to each visa.

Mehron’s sleepy and cheerful face was indeed there to greet me at that absurd hour with her father’s favourite taxi driver in tow. Both of whom were exhausted having mixed up the dates and gone to pick me up at that same time the night before as well!



All the taxis here are blue and white, with no working seatbelts, a maximum speed of 40km/hr and their drivers face the incredibly difficult task of not hitting the pedestrians who waltz around the roads like they own the place. The penalty for killing someone in a car accident is a minimum of 15 years in prison even if it is not the driver’s fault, so there is plenty of motivation to drive safely and slowly.

Addis Ababa is high in the mountains of Ethiopia at 2,300m elevation, and is incredibly lush and green and unseasonably torrential with rains and cold weather thanks to El Nino. I have been living in my sweater, jeans and scarf every day. We have a fire in the stove of her dad’s house most days to warm ourselves up. Mehron’s dad does live on the Sandford International School campus, a swanky complex with six gate guards (every house has a gate and a guard here despite the lack of violence in the city) of many buildings housing an elementary, secondary and night ESL school for Addis. The biggest danger here is pickpockets... there is very little violent crime in Ethiopia.

Our house is like a really comfortable cottage, decorated with Persian rugs, Native Canadian art and Syrian furniture from their family’s many travels. Mehr and I share a bedroom with an ensuite Anne of Green Gables decorated bathroom, with a shower with plenty of hot water down the hall by the kitchen. Mehr’s dad is an excellent cook and makes a wide range of incredible meals with everything from prosciutto to litchi thanks to the slightly pricey but well stocked local grocery store, and the assistance of the refrigerator, stove and oven in the kitchen.

The only thing he has not made is Ethiopian food, which was made for us by Mehron’s grandmother, whose mother used to cook for Emperor Haile Selassie, the idolized deceased king of Ethiopia. Ethiopian food and coffee are excellent but served completely separately and I assure you that coffee pizza is yet to be invented here. Rather, they eat delicious meat and vegetables in yummy very spicy sauces with injera bread for dipping.

I have been informally introduced with more conventional hand-shaking to most of the city already since Mehron’s dad knows EVERYONE. I must have met fifty people this first week alone. The local hang out is Three Bees, a front porch bar opposite the school campus. Further afield are the Hilton and Sheraton Hotels and Bole street, where the drinking and eating happens away from home. We went to a great Motown show at the Sheraton where my surprise birthday party unfolded on Friday night.

And while the stereotypes about Africa may be exaggerated, there is a certain air of ridiculousness afoot. For example, when we asked our taxi driver to take us to a fruit stand, he abandoned the completely empty and paved road to drive along the crowded pedestrian sidewalk for a block and a half. There is also a state-of-the-art park that has been built with tantalizing playgrounds galore that it is completely forbidden to enter because some clever city planner put it too close to the palace. Better yet, today I watched two men holding hands with a goat (holding hands with the goat’s front legs, not with each other) to cross the road, all three bipedal. Plus, Ethiopia’s best sniper really did come to my surprise party at the Sheraton and sang along to my Happy Birthday chorus.

I like it!

Austria - Vienna - The Two Faces of the City

"You have troubles of one sort or another -

TO THE KAFFEEHAUS!

She can't come to you for some reason no matter how plausible -

TO THE KAFFEEHAUS!

You have holes in your shoes -

THE KAFFEEHAUS!

You have a salary of 400 crowns and spend 500 -

THE KAFFEEHAUS!

You are frugal and permit yourself nothing -

THE KAFFEEHAUS!

You find no woman who suits you -

THE KAFFEEHAUS!

You are SPIRITUALLY on the threshold of suicide -

THE KAFFEEHAUS!

You hate and disdain people and yet cannot do without them -

THE KAFFEEHAUS!

Nobody extends you any more credit anywhere -

THE KAFFEEHAUS!"

-Peter Altenberg, 1859-1919

Alright, so the city of Vienna has two distinct sides to it. Two very different pairs of trousers in fact: the Fancy Pants and the Stinky Pants.



Fancy Pants:
This is a place of palaces and princes, of waltzes and women in Chanel, of Mozart and men in Armani suits on bicycles on a Sunday afternoon, of cakes, coffeehouses and classical music. You feel like you should be sauntering around town in expensive designer wares or at least a poofy ballgown to match your surroundings. Margaux and I spent our time enjoying the fantastic cakes of the coffeehouses and admiring the stunning-ness of the city, while hosted by my friend Kristin who lives here for the time being. Highlights include the Belvedere, home to Klimt's The Kiss and Judity I (such a great exhibit!), Schonbrunn, the Hapsburgs' summer palace with gardens and mazes included, a Haydn concert, Haus der Musik (excellent museum!), and of course, my birthday festivities with my friends in Europe!





HOWEVER, Vienna is also a place of peculiar perfumes. The Metro is the ultimate example of the city's unique aromas, where the denizens of the area who believe in the every-other-day-shower and in the optional-application-of-deodorant frequent the public transit and stink up the trains. Where babies poop their diapers and their moms glance at you across the aisle unapologetically and make no move to address their smelly child. Where a man lets a silent but incredibly deadly fart rip on the seat next to you and smirks as you gag and bolt for the nearest doors and claw at the doors to open as soon as the station appears in the distance. But it is not restricted to the Metro. This is also the place where horse drawn carriages mark their trails with the distinct odor of horse urine and manure. And where it is apparently okay to toss your still-lit cigarettes into the open purses of passers-by (Kristin's bag still reeks of smoke and has four holes thanks to that douchebag).



Overall, I definitely would recommend Vienna. But I would also suggest that you take a noseplug and zip your purse shut... just in case.

Sidenote: One bizarre discovery in Vienna...

Hungary - Budapest - Home of Paprika and Horses

So Budapest was GREAT. Margaux and I arrived having no idea what to expect, but having heard good things from a few other people. We scored a super hostel in central Pest near the opera house within walking distance of nearly everything.



We spent lots of time sightseeing and eating yummy paprika-laden goulash soup (not a stew, by the way), and almost no time drinking any alcohol to dry ourselves out from Oktoberfest. Hungary was slightly more of a challenging travel destination as well, since the language is incredibly difficult to pronounce due to an abundance of consonants in a row and seven kinds of accents on each vowel (we only mastered please and thank you - kerem and kosonom - by the end of our stay). Also, despite being in the EU, Hungary is still transitioning to the Euro, so we found ourselves with the awkward exchange rate of 170 forints to 1 Canadian dollar, meaning we had no idea what anything was costing us!

Our first priority was to spend a few hours pampering ourselves in the Rudas Baths, the oldest Turkish baths in the city in the sketchiest most broken down appearing building ever. Inside was stellar though. There were six pools and two saunas, with the pools varying in temperatures from 15 to 42 degrees centigrade. So relaxing... I kept hearing my mom's voice warning me not to fall asleep in the tub as I dozed off.



Further afield was Memento Park, home of Statue Park, where the former Soviet statues have been relocated outside the city. Definitely worth a look. We also got to watch old reels of secret police training tapes about surveillance and secret house searches, which were dated but creepy.



The bulk of the tourist attractions were on (or near, in the case of the gorgeous Parliament building) Castle Hill, in Buda, where the National Palace houses the Hungarian National Gallery (the interesting part of which was closed for renos, bummer) and the Budapest Museum. Castle Hill is also home to the fabulously mosaiced roof of St Matyas Church and another castle, as well as Fisherman's Bastion and generally fantastic views over the city.



My personal favourite was the Labirintus, a massive underground cave network/labyrinth under Buda Hill, which includes an ever flowing wine fountain (too many fruit flies to drink it though!). Poor Margaux was dragged along in the dark bowels of the mountain behind me, and she was kind enough to lie and say she enjoyed the dank underbelly of the castle ruins. She's a good friend like that.

Germany - Munich - Dirndls and Ledenhosen and Bier, Achtung!

Short version:



We drank a lot of beer.

Long version:

We passed a quiet time on our train to Munich, in silent contemplation of the challenge that lay ahead: Oktoberfest. Little did we know at that time just how grand the challenge would be... upon joining the rest of our party (Trevor, Bronwyn, Chad, Ryan, Taylor and Greg), we were informed of the goal: 8 people, 4 days, 100L of beer. We scoffed but committed to try our best.

Our first beer excursion was to Hofbrauhaus, the famous biergarten located in downtown Munich, where we had our first introduction to the Bavarian norms of beerdrinking. A full litre of 6.5 per cent alcohol specially brewed Oktoberfest beer (1 of 6 official beers) is plunked down before your eyes by a dirndl-sporting bar wench, who then slides a fat crackled pork knuckle (don't look for the vegetables, they have fled the city) almost onto your lap to accompany your drink, while in the background, the lederhosen-clad oompah bandmen warm up the crowd with a rousing rendition of the beer drinking anthem of Munich, Ein Prosit, which has the entire hall standing on the benches hollering along and clanking litres together, beer sloshing everywhere.



(Also, please note the complete normalcy of running around town in the traditional costumes of lederhosen and dirndls. No one even bats an eyelash, since more than half of any crowd you encounter is thusly attired. Note: it is not cheap fashion, with dirndls running about 100 Euros, and lederhosen at 200 Euros.)

We scored ourselves a table at the prestigious Augustiner beer tent on the Oktoberfest grounds at Theresienwiese and spent 9am-4pm on a nice Friday afternoon blowing second hand smoke out of our faces, consuming 3+ litres of Augustiner and multiple hendls (chicken roasted on a spit), pretending to know the words to Ein Prosit, which went from being played once every few hours to every twenty minutes in the afternoon, making friends with Germans who didn't speak English, participating in dance-a-long songs involves a swimming motion kind of like a German YMCA song, and generally enjoying ourselves. We had one casualty in our ranks, who bowed out for the rest of the afternoon after getting sick but rallied and rejoined us for late dinner and drinks that night (yes, beer was consistently consumed over the four days, and not just at the beer tents of the Oktoberfest fair grounds).



We did sneak a little culture into our visit. We did the free walking tour of Munich (nowhere near as good as the one in Berlin!), learning about a range of history of the city, from Hitler's failed effort to take Munich and the Nazi resistance movement to the stealing of the airport's May Pole by the local police to embarrass airport security. We also went to a soccer game between Paderborn and Munich, where we were suitably impressed with the range of cheering chants and routines of all the fans.



At one point, they were shouting something in German that sounded a lot like "She needs a washcloth!", which is probably not an accurate translation. My favourite is when the two sides of the stadium alternated shouting the same thing in German at each other. I think it was the equivalent of "You suck!", "No, YOU suck!".

Final tally was between 75-80L of beer for the whole group. Beer champions Chad and Trevor had at least 15L each. Margaux pulled off more than 5L and I managed 6.5L. All in all, we had a blast, but we were definitely were ready to give our livers a little breathing space in Budapest!

Our organizer and beer champ Chad also made a commemorative video of our adventures (3 parts).