Busy week

One of Clau's friends visited us last weekend, we walked all over the friggin' place showing him Munich, and on Sunday we went to Oktoberfest. Wow, is that a lot of people and stuff, huuuuuge tents crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with drunk smoking Europeans. I can, however, make a few observations about Oktoberfest:

• The Dirndl is a remarkably flattering item - seriously, just about every girl looks really good in them.
• Oktoberfest beer is really, really tasty and also quite strong.
• Extra-salty fried chicken is one of the best drunk foods ever.
• Germans have a tremendous amount of songs that they bust out for Wiesn, and never listen to for the rest of the year. Certain songs, like "Country Roads" (yes, the one by John Denver) seem to never go out of style, whilst others may fade over time. The one that I keep hearing over and over is "So a schöener Tag" (a relative newcomer), which is very catchy the first ten or so times you hear it, but loses its charm over the course of the event. As far as I can tell it was a children's song that someone did a more pop-centric remake of, and is now played incessantly - seriously, if you spend more than an hour in a tent, you're going to hear it. Ditto for "Ein Prosit". But at least "Ein Prosit" is short.
  

Check it out:


You can stop once you hit about 1:45 because it's ALL THE SAME after that.

So anyway, what else this week: I started a German class on Monday - I have class 2x/week, so hopefully I will learn and practice - I still end up in situations where I understand absolutely NOTHING but I can occasionally have basic conversations. My ideal plan is to speak relatively well by the time we decide to leave (or one of our companies makes us an offer we can't refuse to move somewhere else). We'll see how that goes.
Yesterday I went to football match - it's generally fun to see FC Bayern, but they were playing some podunk team in a smaller division, and it was pretty sad. Still, glad I got to go since the FC Bayern games are generally sold out months in advance.
Today, another German lesson.
Tomorrow, TWO Oktoberfest dates - one for my work and one that we bought tickets for ages ago - not sure which one I'm going to go to - or, theoretically, I may end up trying to do both, which would probably be a VERY bad idea. But, knowing me, after a couple of Maß I might decide it's a good idea.
Friday we head to Madrid to see our friends Alexis and Luis, who are there on vacation. Yeah, we're totally busting in on someone else's vacation - that's how we roll.

And, of course, in early October it's off to NYC, Reno, Oakland, NYC, back home! Woohoo! Can't wait.