We made it to Italy

Amber: Oktoberfest was quite the introduction to Europe. We had a great time with our friends Lee, Dustin, Rich, Tommy and Jeff! Over the course of our two day stay in Munich, one of them was able to slice his hand on a broken stein and required eight stitches in his palm, another may or may not have pooed in his leder hosen due to too many beers, brawts and too long of a line for the leu, and another one got married to a girl that spoke no English only he lost her when looking for a restroom. Funny group of guys, and all were in good spirits despite some of the... setbacks. On the first night, Tim and I each had four of the liter beers before deciding it would be best for us to take the subway home. On our ride home, we found that we were taking the wrong train. I stepped off the train when it stopped, only to look behind me and see the doors slidding shut, Tim still on board. We both looked wide eyed at each other as the train zoomed away, leaving me behind. Giggling to myself, I boarded a train only a few minutes later and thankfully found Tim at the next train stop. Happily, we were able to make it back to our flat together. Our third morning in Munich we got up and found our rental car to head south to Verona. Tim was able to find someone to join us on Car Pooling that was German. We were so happy to have a local ride with us and guide us out of Munich! And she helped cover the cost of gas, toles and the rental. Tim is so good at finding a bargain! I was feeling the effects of Oktoberfest, so napped a little as we drove through the southern parts of Germany, Austria and into Italy. It was beautiful! Tall mountains with castles perched on top of them at every turn. We got a little off track a few times, but Nadine was able to get us right to her stop at Trento, a town next to Lago Garda. My horrible navigating skills and Tim's endless patients got us the rest of the way in the dark and rain to our new home for three days; Camping del Garda. Camping del Garda was a nice little camp ground just north of Verona. It was right on Lago Garda, and consisted of tent sights or neat little rows of motor homes. We had a motor home, equipped with a nice shower, two bedrooms, stove and pots and pans. It did not come with toilet paper or towels, but we were prepared and had brought some ourselves and were happy to go to the store and got full use out of the pasta strainer and wine key they provided. Camping in Italy involves a lot of pasta and vino. At least for Tim and I. We found a small grocery store and prepared pesto with rotisserie chicken and enjoyed a bottle of Soave with dinner. Delicious! We took a train into Verona and were able to walk through one of the most romantic cities of all times. Romeo and Juliet did 'live' here, after all. We hiked around the city and saw the Arena di Verona, an ancient amphitheater that can hold up to 16,000 people and was built around 110AD. Sant' Anastsia is an absolutely beautiful church built in 1290 and housed amazing artwork. I was surprised that we could freely take pictures inside. We walked across a bridge and visited the Museo Archeologico and Teatro Romano, and Tim forced me to climb up to a bell tower that was terrifying yet beautiful to look down from; Torre dei Lamberti. And of course, we saw "Juliet's House," a two story building with a teny tiny balcony turned into a place where millions of love lorn girls have gone and written love graffiti along the brick walls. For a small fee, you can go inside and get your photo taken on the balcony. We opted to not get the smooching photo. The next day we decided we had seen enough of the sights in Verona and instead drove up Lake Garda in search of a mountain to climb. We ended up taking a tram up Mt Baldo and hiking around for a bit. We watched some para gliders take off from the mountain and drift out over the lake. It is really beautiful on the lake! A large herd of sheep and goats lived on the top of the mountain, and we were able to watch a man and his two dogs herd them along the ridge. A huge rain storm moved in as we were attempting to go a bit farther along the mountain, so we opted to turn around and go wine tasting instead. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves sipping on Amorone's grown in Italy and wandered around the tasting room, pouring ourselves more wine as we discussed our onward travels to Florence.

We Are Back: Munich and Oktoberfest!

Tim:  We are back! After over four months, Amber and I are back on the traveling road; first stop Oktoberfest! We left our home in Anchorage on a nine hour flight direct to Frankfurt, Germany. Amber and I got a window and isle seat on the right side of the plane. I was surprised at how limited the leg room was. The leg room on this Condor flight in a Boeing 767 was much smaller than the Boeing 737s that we usually fly on Alaska Air. This meant that I had to sit straight up the whole flight and did not get any sleep. I think Amber managed a couple of hours of sleep. Our flight left at 1 Pm Alaska time, and we arrived in Frankfurt at 9 AM Germany time. After a few minute wait in line for passport control we made our way to the subway station at the bottom of the airport. The train ride to Munich was going to take 6 hours and 20 minutes and four different trains because we chose the cheapest option that included only regional trains.
       Richard Shultz, someone we knew from Anchorage was on the plane ride over with his brother, Tommy. Their more direct train took only four hours. The train ride was beautiful. After getting out of Frankfurt the countryside was very pretty. There was lots of farm land with tilled fields and some that still had corn growing. As we got closer to Munich we started to see vineyards and the occasional castle on the hillside.
      By the end of our train ride it was about 6:30 in the morning Alaska time. We had both fallen asleep in our seats on the train. Amber was awoken by a German man telling her that the train was about ready to turn back the other direction. She shook me awake and we stumbled sleepily off the train.
      The next step was to contact our AirBnb host. AirBnB is a worldwide website where private people can rent out there homes, apartments, and private rooms. Oktoberfest is a very busy time in Munich and as such the hostel and hotels are almost sold out and if not very expensive.
There were a total of nine people that we new from Alaska that had come over to visit Oktoberfest. There were all staying in Wombats Hostel, walking distance from the main train station for 70 Euro a night each. That would have been 140 Euro a night for Amber and I or around $181 US dollars a night. I was able to find us a room in someones flat for 60 Euro a night for both of us.
      Our host, Florian, did not get off of work till six o'clock so we waited at the main train station for a few minutes before he arrived. We did not have a working cell phone, and there was no free wifi in the airport, so contacting Florian was a challenge. We ended up using a pay phone that cost about 2 Euro/minute. It took the longest time to figure out how to dial Florian. Turns out I needed two zeros in front of the country code to get it to work.
       We took the bus to Florian's flat. It took about 15 minutes. Florian's apartment was located on the fourth and top floor of his building. The building looked like it was built in the early 1900s and did not have an elevator, so we hike up the old creeking, wooden stairs. By the time we reached his place we were too exhausted to do anything else but sleep.
     The next morning we got up at 10 am, found some quick breakfast at the small grocery store across the street from our  and made our way to the main Oktoberfest area. The subway was easy to navigate and took less than fifteen minutes to get there. Oktoberfest reminded me of the Alaska state fair on steroids. There were food stands everywhere with almost everyone of them selling hot dogs. Apparently, Germans like their hot dogs or Bratwursts, same same. Oh yah, and pretzels. Germans like pretzels too, giant ones. Interspersed between the food stands were fair rides like small roller coasters and Ferris wheels. Then there was the beer tents, huge! There was a tent for every major beer company in Germany most of which I cannot pronounce properly.
        I had reached or friend JD who had told me that the group was headed for the Hofenbrau tent. He was not joining because he was too hungover from the night before. We found the right tent easily enough. I think there are fourteen main beer tents. The Hofenbrau tent was large enough to hold several thousand people and by the time we arrived it was already quite packed. After wondering the crowded isles for a few minutes we spotted our friends. All five of them were dressed in complete leaderhossen outfits holding giant 1 Liter steins of beer. We quickly joined and ordered ourselves beers too. A liter of beer cost 10 Euro or about $13 USD for approximately 32 oz.
     Our friends had bought their lederhosen the night before for 200 Euro ($260 USD) for the whole outfit. The guys did not stand out in their outfits. Close to half of the people there were wearing traditional costumes of some kind. Our waitress brought us steins eight at a time with for steins in each hand. Physically, she could barely lift them. She also had to carry them through the maze of thousands of happy drunk people crowded into the tent.
     There was a band on a raised up platform about 8 feet high playing music. The songs included traditional German drinking songs as well as some American classics like John Denver's "West Virginia" we played several times every evening and the whole tent full of people would join in shouting the lyrics.
      Often you would see someone stand up on their table (always young men) and begin to chug the beer from their Stein. The crowd would cheer him on excitedly until he was finished with the contents. If the man failed to chug his whole beer, the crowd would boo the man down from the table.
     The good times continued until about seven o'clock when we went back to the subway station and our place for the night. We were up again my noon at the Oktoberfest site. It took us longer to find our group of friends. We visited several of the other tents which were just as full of people and almost as rowdy.

     On the morning of our departure from Munich we made our way to our Hertz rental car agency. We rented a car for four weeks. We were a little worried that the car was going to be very small as we did not know what kind of car we were going to get. We ended up with a four door Hyundai hatchback. Although it is small it works fine. We picked up a carpooler from the website www.carpooling.co.uk to not only help with the cost but also to help us navigate our way out of the city. Our carpooler, Nadine, a German was on her way to Trento just north of where we were going, Verona.