The vacation begins.

We now have a place to stay and we have cash. We rented a small apartment for the second leg of our Munich trip from Sandra (Wiesnparadies), so we called her yesterday and asked if she still had it available for the next few days. To our complete relief, she did! Plus, it's only 80 euro per night instead of 175. Whew! We've finally figured out the ATMs, too. We can only withdraw 100 euro at a time, so hopefully we aren't getting killed with ATM fees. We'll raise hell about it when we get home if so, but for now we're just going with the flow.

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After a run of bad luck in the beginning (mitigated by the finding of the 50 euro note), we finally feel like we're on vacation!

We headed out to Oktoberfest earlier yesterday - we got to the fairgrounds at 11:30am or so. It was still super packed, but we found seats quickly. Our first stop was the Hofbrauhaus tent and sat next to a lovely family: Roland, Alexandra (the parents), Miriam and Maximillian (the kids). They taught us (phonetically, anyway) the toasting song: Ein prosit, ein prosit, gie guemuse klie kass! (Or something like that...) We chatted with them about visiting America (they are planning a family trip next summer) and Bavaria in general. They were very sweet.

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Our next stop was the Paulaner beer tent. There we met Eike who offered us a seat. He asked if we were American, with some concern. We explained that we were, but 1) we'd already been to one beer tent and 2) we brew our own beer at home. He was relieved and then pointed down the table at the guy passed out face down on the table. "That guy is American - you don't want to end up like that." Laughter ensued at the expense of our fellow countryman. Eike is a teacher and an athlete (swimmer) and a student at the University - finishing up his teaching certificates, I gather. He was in love with all things Apple and was shocked - shocked! - to meet two Americans who didn't carry an iPhone and an iPod on them at all times. We told him we didn't have TV at home either. He just shook his head. It made more sense when I told him my name was Autumn.

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I should explain something about the amount of beer we appear to be drinking: Allen orders full beers, Autumn orders "Radlers". A radler is half beer, half lemonade (or Sprite). Much less liver damage than we appear to be incurring.

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After an afternoon at Oktoberfest, we headed down to Sandra's apartment near the Isar river on Baldestrasse. She was still getting the apartment ready and was so gracious. We chatted for a bit and left our bags there as we headed out for dinner. As it happens, there is a fantastic little vegetarian/vegan restaurant 2 or 3 blocks from the Wiesnparadies apartment: Cafe Kopfeck. We had a delicious dinner (complete with beer, natch), which is good because we have been subsisting on mostly beer and pretzels at this point.

This morning we tried to get up early - anticipating another scramble for a seat at the beer tents at Oktoberfest, but totally failed. We got up at 9am, and left the house around 10:30. It's a 15 minute walk up Kaputziner Strasse from the apartment to the Theresienwiese fairgrounds, so we strolled up and got there just before 11. What a difference a day makes! Sunday was completely packed. Monday morning? Not so much.

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We stopped first at the Lowenbrau tent, and the second at the Spaten tent. We had great seats for the Oompah band at Spaten - on the upper level. We didn't really meet anyone today as the tents were mostly empty.

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Since our apartment has no internet, we are now at Starbucks having a coffee and utilizing the free internet. We didn't have a chance to have coffee this morning before we hit the beer tents, so we figured it was time for a pick-me-up. We're off to Schloss Nymphenburg for a stroll around the gardens, and then off to Stuttgart tomorrow.

All of the albums are available here:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3 (more to come)

Prost!