Europe Prose Blog

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!”

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.