In October of 2018, Scott and I took another long trip to Europe, but this time it was even more special because we had a third travel companion!  My sister, Erica, had always wanted to attend Oktoberfest in Munich and sample authentic German cuisine so we planned this Eurotrip around the famous festival.  The totality of this trip included Salzburg, Zurich, Strasbourg, Dusseldorf and Amsterdam, but it all began with Oktoberfest in Munich.

Our travel from Seattle to Munich was fairly uneventful.  However, I will avoid the Amsterdam airport if at all possible in the future.  They had crazy long passport control lines that you had to go through even if you were only catching a connecting flight.  Contrarily, Munich had some of the simplest customs procedures that I’ve experienced to date.  We arrived at our hotel, Marc Munich (Marc München), in the early afternoon and weren’t able to check in so we immediately hit the streets to explore the city.  We watched as throngs of people, mostly in traditional tracht clothing, flooded into Oktoberfest.  This gave us a pretty good idea of what we would be up against the following day when we were to try and attend the festival.

Eventually, we ended up in the center of town and found a restaurant called Schnitzelwirt (https://www.schnitzelwirt.de/home/) that was in a very authentic looking basement space.  Most of the waiters were only marginal with their English and were extremely friendly and welcoming.  We each chose a different beer based on nothing but blind faith and all got different versions of roasted meat with potatoes.  It seems as though every time we travel, our first meal is chosen with no frame of reference and is totally stumbled upon.  It also seems as though our first meal is one of the best of the entire trip.  Whether we were exhausted and starving or the food was just that good, we were in culinary heaven.

After dinner, we walked around to get the lay of the land and then we checked in to our hotel.  We promptly fell asleep at around 5PM and slept off our jet lag and our food coma.

Since we had seen the chaos and the numbers of people that attend Oktoberfest in the afternoon the previous day, we chose to get to the festival early.  We were awake by 5:30AM and out to breakfast by 8:00AM.  We went to a chain called Coffee Fellows and had a quick bite, then we walked to Marienplatz (the main square) to explore.  Marienplatz is home to some incredible architecture and seeing it when the town is still mostly asleep was really special.  It’s a place of history and culture that is humbling to see.

While walking around, we discovered a luscious street market.  There were tons of shops selling produce, flowers, meat, crafted wares, cheeses, grains, sauces, and the list goes one.  There were also tons of restaurant stands.  We bought some strawberries that literally melted in our mouths and ate them in front of a church in Marienplatz.

Finally, it was time to head in to the festival (it was about 10:30AM at this point).  Once we came within a certain distance of the festival, there were arrows all over the sidewalks guiding us to our destination.  Even as early as we were, there were still crowds of people walking with us towards the gates.  We were pleasantly surprised when there was absolutely no wait to get into the venue!  We were able to take a photo at the entrance, walk straight into our first tent and get served our first beer-stein all within a few minutes.

Our first tent was the Paulaner tent!  It was still very early on a Thursday so seating was plentiful.  The tent was decorated with green banners, taxidermy, and a massive crown made out of hops.  There was a band setting up, people selling pretzels, and we each got our first liter of beer which was delicious!

The next tent we visited is one of the most famous: Hofbrauhaus.  Things were definitely getting busier at this point, but a nice lady took us back to a bunch of empty tables.  The band at this tent was up and running and continuously playing a “Cheers” song that we new by heart by the time we left.  Everyone would wrap their arms around each other, sway back and forth, clink their huge beer-steins together and yell “Prost!” at the top of their lungs.  We ordered a cheesy bacon pretzel and by the time we finished off our second liter of beer, we needed to take a short rest.  In fact, we left tent #2 and went and sat on a lovely grassy hill that was littered with absolutely obliterated drunk people at about noon.

Our third tent was our final drinking tent: Hacker.  This tent is famous for the ceiling that is decorated like a sky.  We got extremely lucky as Oktoberfest was now officially busy and we managed to snag a table to sit down and eat at.  We got another pretzel and some more traditional German entrees.  The one I remember most clearly was Erica’s Sauerbraten which I am still drooling over in my dreams.

We did walk through a fourth tent, Spaten, but couldn’t find seating and we needed a break from beer anyways, so we snapped a photo and continued on towards the carnival.

The Carnival towards the back of the festival was actually pretty easy to access given how many people were in attendance.  Scott, Erica and I managed to ride a ferris wheel, a roller coaster and do a couple fun houses.  It’s a wonder none of these things made us sick after so much beer and rich food.  One of the fun houses offered 3-D glasses and while walking through the moving tunnel, I managed to fall and crawl the rest of the way through as a 7-year-old ran right past me…it wasn’t my most elegant moment.

When we finished the rides we decided it was time to head out.  We made a quick stop on the way home for some pretty awful fried food and ended up passing out at 7:00PM.  At midnight, however, a fire alarm went off in our hotel and we weren’t allowed back in so we found ourselves wandering the busy streets of Munich in our pajamas.  We saw so many people in lederhosen stumbling around looking to eat, puke, or hit a strip club.  Eventually we ended up in a popular train station drinking water and people watching.

The next day, we were up early again and had breakfast at our hotel.  They had a wide array of sausages, cheeses and fruits, but Erica had Muesli which quickly became one of our favorite things on this trip.  Muesli is a form of Swiss overnight oats with yogurt, fruit and other toppings and it is incredibly delicious.

After breakfast, we were taking a drive through Bavaria to visit the Neuschwanstein Castle which inspired the iconic Sleeping Beauty castle in Disneyland.  We weren’t expecting the hike from town (the only parking available) through the forest and up to the castle, but it was a gorgeous day and we had a lot of beer to work off from the day before.  Once we got to the top we realized that there were no tours of the interior for another three hours so we decided to just take in the sights from the outside.  The grounds were amazing and we were surprised to learn that the castle isn’t that old.  It was built in the late 1800s.  The best view of the castle is from a rickety, narrow bridge that is a short hike away and crowded with people.  We walked out only a few feet to get some photos and an adrenaline rush.

After hiking back down, we stopped at a shop in town and bought a few Christmas ornaments and a very ornate cuckoo clock.  Then we had one of our most memorable meals of the trip.  As we started driving home, we realized we were starving and I used the smartphone provided by our hotel to look up a restaurant.  I found one called Wirsthaus Acheleschwaig and we got directions to it.  We found ourselves driving down super rural roads and farther away from civilization.   Pretty soon, we realized we hadn’t driven by any houses at all in quite sometime and we were only minutes from our destination.  We ended up at a farm in the middle of nowhere complete with horses, chickens and dogs running freely.  There were plenty of people eating on the patio, however, so we decided to give it a shot.  We walked up to a tiny window and ordered from a young man who spoke no English at all.  We each got a Radler (half beer, half lemonade), Erica and I got roasted pork and Scott got deer rehragout.  It was mouth watering!  We had to protect our drinks and food from hundreds of flies, but it was totally worth it.

When we arrived back at our hotel, we took a power nap and then went back out to walk the city some more.  We tried to grab beers at the famous Hofbrauhaus brewery in town. Although it was a beautiful and popular place, it was extremely hot and stuffy and too crowded for us to get served.

We ended up eating outdoors at the Paulaner brewery since that was Scott’s favorite beer from Oktoberfest and had an amazing dish with mushroom cream sauce and spätzle (a fluffy German pasta).  Afterwards we returned to the train station and got a raspberry cream danish and an apple pastry.

The next day was our last full day in Bavaria and one of our busiest and most intense days of the trip.  Our plan was to go to the concentration camp, Dachau, and visit the Austrian city, Salzburg.

Dachau was one of the most intense experience of our travels to date.  I was not expecting to feel what I felt or react the way I did.  At times I felt as though I couldn’t cross a threshold without bursting into tears or shrinking away with fear.  To see barracks, crematoriums, artifacts and tools used to punish residents was unlike any museum experience I had had to date.  It was obvious that Scott and Erica were having similar feelings and reactions.  I remember all of us remarking on how jarring it was to be surrounded by beautiful nature on a perfectly sunny day while walking through structures and exhibits that exuded such darkness.

Following Dachau, there was a pretty silent car ride away from the concentration camp.  We were all stunned and in our own thoughts as we tried to switch gears towards our next activity.  Eventually, we were having thoughtful conversations about our experience there and were ready to explore a new city in a new country.

Salzburg is a city in Austria right on the border with Germany.  There are many similarities between Bavarian culture and the vibe we felt in Salzburg, but they maintain their own unique identity.  It is a city most known for being Mozart’s hometown (this is extremely evident by the dedications to him all over town) and being the setting for “The Sound of Music”.  Truly, Salzburg feels like a beautiful, Baroque town that is bursting with art, music, and alpine heritage.

The first thing we did in Austria was eat!  We had lunch at Gasthof Goldgasse (https://www.gasthofgoldgasse.at/en/) and it was yet another extremely tasty and memorable meal.  Scott had suckling pig, Erica had a full trout with the fins and head intact, and I had sturgeon ravioli.  We all enjoyed Aperol Spritzes (a staple on many menus in this region) and several desserts.  I think the show stopper was definitely the Apfel Strudel; a warm apple strudel swimming in custard sauce (insert drooling emoji here).

The rest of our day trip was spent viewing Mozart’s house, the Sound of Music gardens, Fortress Hohensalzburg, and the Salzburg Cathedral.

 

We took thousands of steps in Salzburg and saw dozens of sights, but the one thing we struggled to find was the famous Viennese coffee.  After an exhaustive search, we ended up with a drip coffee with some whip cream on top and drove ourselves back to Munich.

On our final morning in Munich, we scoured the town for an Oktoberfest pin for my grandpa and had one final delicious meal at a breakfast place called Backspielhaus (https://backspielhaus.de/en/).  With full bellies, it was time for another country as we set our rental car GPS towards Zurich, Switzerland.  Stay tuned for part II!