The Real Oktober Deal.

Well, it actually happened. I went to the beer drinker's holy land. Munich, in the last two weeks of September and the first two weeks of Oktober (I like spelling it that way) is the place where there is once-in-a-lifetime quality beer flowing. The beer comes ouk of tapped real wood kegs/barrels, that are so big I can barely fit my arms half way around them. The breweries that have tents at Oktoberfest, work ALL YEAR for their Oktoberfest brews. AND, every weekend during Oktoberfest, the serve a slightly different brew. So I had a one-time-only beer at Lowenbrau, Paulaner, and Hacker-Pschorr. (Actually I had multiple one-time-only beers at said Bier tents, but who's counting).
So on Friday I didn't have class. I spent the day sleeping, running, enjoying my last shower for what may be the next three days, and packing. Our train left Gare-Rennes for Paris Montparnasse at 16h54 ( 4:54 PM real people time). We got on this incredible bullet looking train (that had 1st class seats througout), and pulled out of Rennes for the first time. Not more than a minute later I look out the window and the scenary of the city I currently call home is disappearing rapidly from my view (130 mph, but again, who's counting). So not more than two hours later we all arrive in Paris Montparnasse and start the trans-Paris excursion to Gare de l'Est (Paris' East Train Station), we are met by a display board that doesn't even have our train on it yet. This train was due to leave at about 10 PM so we were in no rush. We peed in the public restrooms that you have to PAY for, and grabbed a spot to make PB and Js in the train station before our 10 hour journey to Augsburg, Germany got underway.
At about 9:30 PM the track for the train to Augsburgg HBF popped up on the monitors. All 7 of us grabbed our stuff and walked out towards the platform. We turned the corner and there it was. It was our chariot to the land where the beer flows faster than the rivers that brew it, and it was a piece of sh*t. For those of you who have seen the movie Eurotrip (don't waste your time if you haven't) it was exactly that train. Everyone is seated in compartments of six people and not given a lot of space to sleep. This is miserable when the train leaves at 10 PM and is due to arrive in Augsburg at 8:10 the next morning. Luckily, we got to spread out a little bit, and there only wound up being 4 of us in the compartment. Three people took the benches, and Gabe, in his most infinite wisdom, said "eh, the floor doesn't look half bad." It wasn't half bad until about 3:30 AM when the conductors thought it would be a brilliant idea to turn the heat off on the train when it was supposed to freeze overnight. We woke up shivering, adjusted positions, grabbed a couple extra hoodies for me, and went back to sleep until about 7:30. We arrived in Augsburg on time, met up with the Union crew from Belgium (they drove to Oktoberfest from Antwerp), and headed to Munich.

Stay tuned for Chapter 2 tomorrow night, but I'm falling asleep with my computer on my lap, dis, bon nuit.