Best Friends & Oktoberfest

The past ten days have been great! My best friend from home came to visit Prague and we spent four days in Munich and Bavaria to celebrate the opening day at Oktoberfest. The amount of people at Oktoberfest was like nothing I have ever seen and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of Germans that  were there. I had heard before that Oktoberfest is filled with tourists from America and Australia, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good American party once in awhile, but it was nice to see that this German tradition still remains very German. There were more people in lederhosen than not, we definitely stood out. We had traditional Bavarian sausages, pretzels, and of course the beer – it was exactly how I had imagined it, a really great day!

Then next few days we rented a car and spent it exploring Bavaria. Last time I was there my friends and I went to Neuschwanstein Castle which was absolutely stunning. This castle was Walt Disney’s inspiration for Cinderlla’s castle in Disney World and it is surrounded by the beautiful, snow capped mountains, so I figured I HAD to bring my boyfriend and best friend here. Turns out driving through Germany without a GPS and a map that doesn’t have the castle on makes it a bit difficult, so we actually never made it to the castle. We ended up in a Bavarian village, Garmisch and it just so happened to be the day of their annual sheep festival. It was a beautiful village in the middle of the Alps full of lederhosen, beer, and sheep! It turned out to be a very “German” experience and we had a great time. As we continued on following signs to Kempten, where we would spend the night, we ended up driving through Austria, and to our surprise the Alps were even more stunning here. It was a gorgeous ride!

What I’ve learned through my travels is that you can’t have expectations, you can’t be upset if a day doesn’t go as planned, and don’t stress about finding a landmark or museum just because Lonely Planet told you to. If you’re lost, don’t waste your day frustrated and searching, make the best of it. Find something else out of the ordinary and embrace it, it will probably end up amazing you just as much, if not more. Just keep going, look for something different, in our case, take the road less traveled. We were thrilled we did, have no regrets for not seeing the castle, and made some pretty great memories along the way. Get lost and enjoy the ride!

 

A Sea of People at Oktoberfest

A Sea of People at Oktoberfest

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Me, My Best Friend, & Bernard, our Oktoberfest waiter

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Garmisch

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Sheep Festival in Garmisch

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Sheep Festival

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Austrian Alps

 

My name is Kelly and I am a recent graduate of SUNY New Paltz. I have my bachelors in Secondary Education and English and during my time as an undergrad I spent a semester studying abroad in Prague, Czech Republic. I enjoyed living in Prague so I have decided to come back for a little while. I will be living in Prague for the next 3 and half months during which I will be taking a TEFL course (teaching english as a foreign language) to prepare myself for my next adventure. Upon graduating New Paltz I received a Fulbright scholarship to teach in Malaysia for 2015. When I leave Prague in December I will be headed to Malaysia and will be a teaching assistant in an English class. I have been traveling to other countries since I was 15 years old and I guess you could say I've been bit hard by the travel bug. =)

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