Randoms #2

If you have been following this blog (and why wouldn't you?), you know by now that, every so often, I need to make a random post. These posts are full a pictures that tell a small story in themselves but do not warrant a blog post of their own. Therefore, I group them together in one big blog post. This was not the first blog post of this kind and it will not be the last. Enjoy!

Just some of the gang hanging out by a fountain. This was right before we toured the Fürstenberg Brauerei.

Anyone who knows me knows how amazing I think Kate Winslet is. I just couldn't escape her in Germany. There I was, minding my own business, and she found me!

This was a photo I took on the Helio Ship. It was just so quintessential Germany here. A beautiful lake with church steeple visible in the distance with a German flag blowing in the wind.

This was taken in front of a store in Ulm when we went to see the church. 

This was also taken in Ulm. When we had descended the church steps we wandered through the city and stumbled upon an international festival. I believe this was a Thai food booth. I saw this lady carving beautiful artwork out of fruit and just had to take a picture. 

I am almost as obsessed with argyle as I am with Kate Winslet. Just kidding. But seriously? I found an argyle house in Ulm! I wanted to wear it!

Ulm is a very interesting city which is why I have so many photos from there.  Someone in my group in Ulm spotted this on a house and I had to take a picture. It was situated on the house's roof. I can only speculate that it was there to ward off evil?

I know this photo has been done a million times but, when I saw the sunset, I just couldn't resist. This was taken after me and the other CBYXers had a fake Thanksgiving. You see, we will all be too far away from each other to see the entire group when the real Thanksgiving rolls around so we decided to have a make-shift Thanksgiving together at one of the participants' houses. When we were satt (full) we made our way to the nearby beach (which was, in fact, always near when you live on the Bodensee) and played on the playground. Natürlich!

This photo may seem familiar since it is the one you see when you first log onto this blog. This was also taken after our make-shift Thanksgiving. I decided to make it my blog photo because it represents what this journey is like. I am in Germany (as seen by the flag) and, although I am an important part of the big picture, I am, in the scheme of things, relatively small. 

What more is there to say. Swans at sunset. And yes, this is a real picture.

Yet more evidence that people are not that different from each other even if they come from other countries. Our defining characteristic? We all love a good deal! Or, in this case, cheap crap we don't actually need. This is a 1€ store in nearby Singen. Not everything was exactly 1€ but everything was pretty cheap. I bought some tupperware there. Three for 1€ baby! It made me feel like I was home.

I didn't really take too many pictures of Konstanz and I regret that. It is a very pretty city situated right on the Bodensee and it is very near to Radolfzell. I saw this and just had to have a picture of me on it. Who wouldn't want a picture of themselves on a metal 8-legged horse with corn-rows?

Axes for sale at Aldis. I mean, what more is there to say really? 

Me and a fellow CBYXer kissing a giant gnome at Konstanze Oktoberfest. That's an oxymoron isn't it? A giant gnome.

Oktoberfest!!!!!!

Okay, so I actually went to Oktoberfest the weekend of the 17th of September but I was really getting behind on my posts so I am playing catch-up now. Many people don't know this but many German cities have their own little "Oktoberfest" during Oktoberfest season (September) but the real one is in München. Me and the other CBYXers went to München Oktoberfest (the "real" one). Our journey bagan in Radolfzell around 8 am and we didn't get to München until after 2. The journey is noramlly pretty long but it was made even longer because the Bodensee has a jail/rehab facility near the train tracks and people often throw themselves onto the train tracks. I was really shocked when I first heard this but it happened multiple times during my stay in Radolfzell. So, as a result, our journey started much later than anticipated and we arrived much later in München than we thought. When we got to Oktoberfest, we wasted no time. We found a "tent" that interested us and waited to get in. Okay, so they have "tents" at Oktoberfest in Germany but they really are what I would call "barns." They are huge wooden buildings. I don't know how many there are in Oktobrfest since we occupied the first tent we could find. The name of our "tent" was probably "Augustiner Bräu München" since that was what was plastered everywhere. The tents are really warm and humid inside from all the bodies so I was really happy to find out we got a table outside. It was so much more fun. Once we had a table, we just sat and drank beer for a couple of hours. It was so much fun. We met people from England, the Netherlands, America, and of course Germany. At around 9 pm it started to downpour. I mean really downpour. I consider myself a pretty prepared person and I had my umbrella with...but my umbrella was no match for this rain. I was completely nass (wet) by the end of the storm. So me and my friends missed our last train home to Radolfzell so we knew we weren't going to be sleeping in our nice warm beds that night. We did, however, opt to take a train to somewhere a bit closer to Radolfzell called Lindau. That way we were away from all the crazy, drunk people. So we spent hours on a train just to get to another city that we didn't live in. We flarfed around Lindau for something like 5 hours feeling tired as heck, waiting for our first train home. Some of my friends took naps in the train station but I have never been able to sleep in strange places so I got no sleep that night. By 6 am the next day we were on a train to Radolfzell and we all slept the whole day when we got home. My time at Oktoberfest was a bit short but I definitely had fun and hope to return for a weekend in the future. Honestly, there could have been no beer there at all and Oktoberfest would still have been tons of fun. I must say though, I never drink beer in the USA but there is just something about this German beer. It is so lecker (delicious)! Oh yeah, I also went to the Oktoberfest in Konstanz near Radolfzell this past Wednesday September 28th. I got no real photos though so please enjoy the ones from the "real" Oktoberfest."

An Oktoberfest "tent"