I needed a little time to process my weekend in Stuttgart before writing the blog entry, so while the dates are accurate in documenting when I was there, the post is actually well over a week late.

Before coming to Europe I decided that one of the things I was not going to miss out on was the Oktoberfest experience. Unfortunately, traveling from Lyon to Munich for a weekend by train was just not possible- the ride would have been 12 hours each way- but I was told by many Europeans that the festival in Stuttgart was equally as impressive. After weeks of unsuccessfully trying to recruit people to go with me, I bought the tickets and headed out on my own. (At this point in my entry I would like to point out that any one of my friends from home would have come with me in a heartbeat. Thinking about things like that make me really wish I was doing this Europe thing with them… even my Dad would have loved to go, that would have been fun too.)

Anyway, so I arrived in Stuttgart late on Friday, found a pizza place that was open, sat around with the owner for a little (while he warned me that I would probably be spending a lot of money for a beer at the festival and should consider paying €2/bottle at his restaurant instead), and then headed back to my hostel for the night. By the next morning I promised myself I wouldn't be taking any more overnight trips alone because every noise creeped me out- the hostel was actually really nice and the doors were solid and locked, but apparently I'm a huge chicken and afraid of heaters and stuff.

Saturday morning I got up early (it didn't make a difference to me, I couldn't sleep anyway) and headed out to the Mercedes museum before going to Oktoberfest. In Stuttgart it is called the Canstatter Wassen Volksfest, but same thing. Normally I wouldn't have gone to the museum, but after working for 6 months at a marketing agency whose biggest client is Mercedes I was somewhat intrigued. Actually, the museum turned out to be really good- it was 4 floors of modern displays with shiny old cars and a pretty interesting setup. It wasn't all about the cars, but it kind of showed how the company changed with each significant period in history. I'd recommend it as a really good way to kill a few hours in Stuttgart.

Since I haven't yet mentioned it, I was really sick this entire trip. There is some kind of pandemic going around our housing and I'm fighting off my second round of it- I've killed 2 bottles of cough medicine and a good amount of NyQuil since I've been here. That being said, I knew I wasn't going to be drinking as much German beer as I would like to tell people I did… but I still headed over to Oktoberfest/the Canstatter Wassen Volksfest around 1. As soon as I arrived I was completely overwhelmed with homesickness- I hate that I can't write about how much fun I had or how amazing my experience was, but I had an entirely different idea in my head about what this would be like. I really thought I could grab a few beers and walk around, observe people, buy some beer steins for my friends, have some sausages or something, but it wasn't like that at all. In order to have a beer, a festively-dressed waitress (er, "beer wench") would have had to sit me down at a table full of drunk, merry people in large groups of their friends and bring me a huge stein of beer that would take me an hour to drink. And, to get food, I would have had to do the same thing and sit with these groups of people while I picked apart a whole chicken with my hands. Sometimes I think there are days when I could do these things on my own, but this weekend was not one of those times. I wanted to be in a large group of my friends too, but unfortunately they're all 4,000 miles away. On top of that, I felt like crap and my cell phone wasn't working so I couldn't even receive the calls I was hoping to get all day. That really bummed me out. So, I had one drink, took 6 pictures, and had to get out of there before I got myself into a depression. It was like doing Six Flags by yourself… you just don't. It's really too bad because that chicken smelled so good, I completely regret not getting one and powering through the awkward I'm-The-Only-Person-Here-Alone thing.

Anyway, I spent the rest of my day exploring Stuttgart, which is actually a really nice small city, and returned to my hostel around 9. I made friends with the bored guy on the night shift and we spent a few hours sitting at the bar and having some really good German beer from a bottle. I met some nice, interesting people from all over Europe throughout the night and had a good time finally having people to talk to. As it turns out, the Germans overall were really nice, and I do have to say that the festival would have been a lot of fun if I had done it the right way and with the right people. It sucks that my experience wasn't what I had hoped it would be, but I would love to go back to Germany and give it another chance. Who's up for the real Oktoberfest next year?