Live Each Day Like It’s Oktoberfest
I’m not a social person – like if
you really know me, you know I’d rather get run over by a bus than
socialize with strangers. This changes dramatically, however, when
you mix in alcohol. After about 3 beers I’m everyone’s friend and
we will probably make blood pacts and swear to be friends forever. I
had one friend who calls this person Three-Beer Tedd because that was
the point when I became the friendliest person in the bar.
At Oktoberfest this isn’t just true
of me, BUT EVERYONE. The best example was our second day when we got
to the Hofbrau tent. We got there late, so most stuff was reserved or
full. We went up to a table with 2 empty spots and asked if we could
sit. The guys actually got really huffy about it. They claimed they
had two friends coming and couldn’t move. The waitress was not
having this; she yelled at them and then basically shoved them out of
the way herself and gave us two spots at the table.
We had to climb over them to get to the
spots, so we had to shove them around, the whole time they were
pissed because of their two friends.
The table happened to be split, so I
sat next to 3 girls from China, and Lana sat next to the angry dudes.
I kid you not, within 10 minutes, Lana was like, “Tedd, can you
take a picture?!!” and she was best friends with all of them. Such
good friends, eventually I moved into the group and we armwrestled?
Not sure why that’s a thing, but I was forced to armwrestle twice
at Oktoberfest. On two different days.
Anyway, it was a grand total of 20
minutes before were not only friends with our whole tables, but also
had turned around and made friends with another entire table, who I
have pictures and selfies with. We never made it to that next level
of friendship with the armwrestling, though.
The point of all this is that I wish I
could be drunk-friendly all the time. I wish other people would also
be drunk-friendly so that it wouldn’t be weird when I say hi for no
reason. This in no way means I will stop hating other humans sober,
but I kind of wish the Oktoberfest atmosphere was something that
would catch on every where. Not the beer so much… If I kept
drinking like that, my liver would be the size of München.
People
Our second night in Munich we went to
the Haufbrau brewery to check things out. As mentioned above, the
atmosphere at these beer halls is crazy. Everyone is friendly and
eager to talk and make friends. At one point Lana went to the
bathroom and these Australians started talking to me. They were
younger and traveling in Munich, but also super boring. I think after
2 more Maße of beer we could have been friends, but as it was, my
brain couldn’t think of things to say. At all. Two of the people
were a married couple, who were also school teachers. They were the
kind of folk who are super nice, but… there’s nothing interesting
to say?
“You’re from Austrlia?”
“Yes.”
“Cool – where?”
“Melbourne.”
“I heard it’s awesome! Like really
diverse.”
“Yes, it’s cool – lots of fun
places to go out. Where are you from?”
“Chicago.”
“Oh! We went to Chicago! It’s cool!”
“Oh! We went to Chicago! It’s cool!”
ad nauseum. Nothing. Interesting.
Said.
The couple was nice enough, though, but
their friend. Omg. Their friend was pretty brutal. She was the reason
they were in town and was getting her Master’s Degree in Giving
Fish CPR after Oil Spills or something. Anyway, we engaged in
conversation for like 5 seconds. We were talking about the train to
Munich and she was like, “Yeah, traveling with bikes was a real
nightmare.”
Now, there are a number of ways to say
that sentence. There is:
1. Traveling with bikes is hard! Am I
right?
2. Lemme tell you about this trip! It
was a disaster! ~insert humorous anecdote or attempt at one~
But this girl opted for 3 which was:
3. You wouldn’t believe how difficult
it is to take my benevolent, fossil-fuel saving bicycle on this
monstrous, uncivilized train.
In that one statement you could feel
her superiority dripping about the train, the people, everyone who
made it difficult to take her benevolent force of a bicycle to
Munich. I think she literally thought that the train conductor was
twirling his mustache and laughing at how he had shrunk all the train
cars to make it hard for her. For her. Only her.
It’s not quite the same but it’s
like if I got on the train with a 100 lb snapping turtle and was
like, “What?! They don’t have a snapping turtle compartment?! The
nerve!”
Needless to say, these trainwrecks of
conversations only lasted a bit before another couple sat down on our
left.
It was Oktoberfest fast, so quickly we
became friends. They were from Milwaukee, they were just visiting
Oktoberfest – on and on and on. Despite being a little older than
us, in completely different work fields, and way better dressed than
I could ever be, we were all chums in no time. We made plans to meet
up, cheersed like 10 times, and pretty much didn’t stop talking
until the beer hall closed at 11.
I know this is the subject of every
movie for children, but had I been given a line up at the start of
dinner and asked to sit next to people, I wouldn’t have picked the
older, well-dressed couple. I would have been like, “They’ll
probably make fun of my shoes and then go stay at the Ritz-Carlton.
That Australian Girl with a senior picture of her bicycle looks
better.”
But that would have made me the wurst.
Families Everywhere are Hot Messes
I didn’t really like Vienna. I’m
not 100% sure, but I think it’s because of all the cities we
visited, it’s the most likely to be the cheerleader with the BMW
from high school. Berlin is the grungy, tatted dude with the
sensitive side, Munich is the president of the fraternity, Prague is
the person you want to be friends with, who has it together, and is
the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, and Istanbul is the
rowdy, chubby, fat guy that is the most fun at parties.
But Vienna is just… She can’t even.
This is the reason that my friend and I got out of town as soon as we
could.
We ended up in
this tiny suburb that is supposed to have good Weiner Schnitzel. We
took some photos of the quaintness, then headed to a restaurant. It
was only like 6:30, still pretty early for dinner. We were not ready
for what awaited.
When we sat down we were immediately
saw a group of rowdy, drunk people. In the middle of the group is
what I can only describe as a quintessential American Mook.
(I was once called racist for using
this term... but it's not:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mook)
Anyway, the Mook was yelling about
stuff and eventually stole the restaurant musicians violin to pretend
to play a song. #douche
Mook evidently belonged to a huge
family of Italian/Mediterranean/Greek? People, who were celebrating
some kind of event. The term celebrating is used loosely for the
following reason: SOMEONE WAS ALWAYS CRYING.
The restaurant musicians were a
violinist and an accordion player. They were taking song requests and
playing random classics like Frank Sinatra songs, My Bonnie Lies Over
the Ocean, etc.
No matter what song it was, someone
ended up weeping on the table. The only people who didn't cry were
the Mook and this fat, happy guy, who kept laughing at everything,
including the people crying.
The whole event came to a head when the
older mediterranean couple started slow dancing. This soon evolved
into a giant circle dance where (Lana and I believe) the couple's two
daughters joined them in the dance...and, of course, started crying.
(Remember, this is at like 7 pm on a Thursday) Mook was eventually
signaled over to join them and they all hugged.
We think that the Mook was meeting the
family for the first time. I mean, if he was going to be my
son-in-law, I can see needing that amount of tears and alcohol to get
through it.
The whole scene is best described by
the families younger, lady friend, who kept yelling songs at the
restaurant musicians. The violinist started playing “My Way” by
Frank Sinatra. This sent the woman into hysterics and she yelled
(while crying), “You're gonna break my heart!!”
I'm glad my Thirsty Thursdays never
turn into that...
Canadian Security
I actually blogged about this
immediately after being sent through the 9 levels of Toronto Customs
hell. Let’s start at the beginning:
So, a happy traveler gets off of his
plane and 2 hours before his flight. He’s like, “Man, I got two
hours. I’ll have time to eat at Burger King.”
He follows the arrows to the “combined”
US and Canadian customs area. He is met with a group of kiosks. What
is the purpose of Kiosk #1? Why, it’s to scan your boarding pass
for some reason. At the end it says something like, “Your baggage
has now been authorized to transfer. Please move to Step #2.” Why
the hell do I need to authorize my baggage? Like… Isn’t that the
whole point of the people at the first check in desk? They mark it
and then the airport has a system to get all the bags to the planes.
For some reason now this needs a kiosk. I have to grant my bag
permission to switch planes.
Well, Kiosk #1 telling me to go to Step
#2 would be a strong indicator that I should know journey the 20
yards to the big screen that reads Step #2.
This is false.
What the computer should say is,
“Please move forward and be screamed at by the young Canadian
woman, who will instruct you that there is actually a step/kiosk 1.5
that you must wait at.”
So after waiting in a 3 minute line for
Kiosk #1, you move to Kiosk #2 (Not Step #2, you American Swine!).
Kiosk #2 is more of a treat, however, as it requires a number of
buttons being punched, all of which correspond to the customs card
they made you fill out for 15 minutes on the plane. Another joy to
this line is that it creates a wonderful bottleneck of people (most
of them 50+) who have never seen a computer before. These people
(bless their hearts) will struggle with the technology, including
this computer taking a picture for some stupid reason that just makes
you look surprised and confused as to why the hell the computer needs
a picture when you have a passport.
Well, once you fight through this line,
the computer prints off a ticket with your picture on it (with more
power than a government issued passport…) and you must go wait at
Step #2.
Step #2 is the piece-de-la-resistance
of the waste of time process that is the Toronto Customs flow. In
this stage you must simply sit and stare at a computer monitor that
will randomly flash your name. I had to wait 20 minutes for my name
to show up on this screen. What was especially satisfying is seeing
people behind me take 2 minutes to wait before getting to plow
through the rest of the 6 steps (not even joking) of getting through
customs. As far as I could tell there is no rhyme and reason to this
computer system. It just… decides who gets to go and who doesn’t.
(It’s not based on flight time as we will see in step 6). Some of
us waited 20 minutes… some 2… there were actually skeletons of
people who never saw their name put on the screen.
If you do survive Step #2 (or #3
whatever the fugg it is at this point), you will go through another
line to meet up with a group of tweens (not joking) who will look at
your passport, picture receipt, and boarding pass and point you into
the next room.
The next room actually made me laugh
out loud. Like I laughed out loud and turned to the people behind me
and go, “Really? Like… Is this a joke?” Because what is in this
room is a passport examination room. The exact same kind of room and
procedure you would go through in 2010 when there weren’t arbitrary
kiosks stationed to ruin your life. Like, not lying, you must wait 10
minutes in line to walk up to a passport officer, who will stamp your
passport, look at your customs form, and ask you questions, just like
the whole 40 minute kiosk process doesn’t exist.
From there you have your boarding pass
checked (this is time #4 for those counting) and being directed INTO
A SECURTIY LINE. YES, YOU MUST GO THROUGH ALL OF SECURITY ALL OVER
AGAIN.
I mean… I don’t get it. You fly 11
hours from Istanbul and then put together your pipe bomb in the
customs line? WTF?!
So you walk 15 steps from having your
boarding pass checked, at which point 3 other people – CHECK IT
AGAIN. They then point to the giant snaking line and tell you to get
in it.
This line does, however, illustrate
what a failure of a system this whole mess is. From the time you
enter the line to the time you exit, all you hear are the screams of
airport workers yelling flight numbers for people to get into the 2
express lanes because they will miss their flights. Yup, this system
is so drawn out and inefficient, they actually have to create
“express” security lanes so that everyone doesn’t miss their
flight.
After snaking through the line you get
to a juncture (it’s like friggin' Chutes and Ladders, not even
joking) and a guy CHECKS THE BOARDING PASS AGAIN. He tells you to go
left or right – wheat from chaff, at which point you round a corner
AND ANOTHER MAN CHECKS YOUR BOARDING PASS. I had been laughing at
queue/step 5, but at this point at step 9, I’m getting seriously
pissed. Like what? WTF?! 6 Boarding pass checks? How could anything
possibly happen where someone would get through steps 1-8 and then
get caught without a boarding pass?!
This guy tries to joke with you and
make you laugh before sending you to the final line to put your
shoes, bags, etc. through the metal detector. This would seem to be a
straightforward process – go through the whole process like usual.
You would be mistaken, however, as they have hired a Mr. McGoo clone
to look at the X-Ray scanner. She literally squints, stares, and
scrutinizes everything that comes through the belt. Full 15-30 second
stops on all bags.
After she finishes parceling through
your bag with a microscope. YOU ARE DONE.
Total time elapsed: 90 minutes. Total
time at any other airport I went through customs? 20.
Canada… just stop. STAHP. You are
Catch-22 and this process is a busted mess. It’s almost as bad as
the iPad guy at the AT&T store.
Why punch in an address in a computer
when you can take 3xs as long doing it on an iPad?!
I would have complained in Toronto but
the customer service lady told me to submit it at the kiosk.
No thanks, Lady. I know your game. And
I will not be coming back to your country.
