Buon viaggio!: Oktoberfest

Germany has always been my favorite country (after Indonesia, of course). Visiting it was my dream. When I knew that I would live in Europe, Germany was on the first of my must visited countries list.

The opportunity came when ESN Trento promoted their event to visit Munich for Oktoberfest. Oktoberfest is the world's largest beer festival and a part of Bavarian culture. The event was to spend a day at that festival, on October 2nd, 2015, for 35 euro. Thinking that even one-way train ticket to Munich from Trento was more than 30 euro, that price was quite cheap. I don't drink. But to see Munich and that famous festival weren't bad ideas. So, I registered for the trip. I didn't expect that Linh, my Vietnamese classmate, would also register for the same reason, and I was successful to convince Maliha, my roommate, to register as well. So, yeay, I wouldn't be alone.

San Bartolameo Residence, Trento

Early before 3 in the morning, I was half running with Maliha and Brenda, our Brazilian neighbor, to the closest gas station where the bus would pick us up since the organizer continuously threatened us not to come late unless we wanted to be left. We should have left at 3 a.m. But, come on, it's Italy. Everybody was there on time but the bus. I think we left around 3.30, I don't really remember.

Reaching Munich

By the time we reached the city, I had been already awake. I could actually enjoy the last fourth part of the journey. It was very exciting to be able to visit the place that I adored so much. Just seeing the typical buildings, which are different with Italian's, the road, and more people on bike made me happy. The bus was parked at a bus parking lot and we had to walk to the Oktoberfest area. It was like 7-10 minutes on foot. My first thought when I got off the bus was: super cold. It seemed like autumn weather had been spread over this country. The festival area was still quite empty. But as I took a look at some beer tents, there were people queuing to get place in those tents. What I found interesting was people who wore Bavarian traditional costume. The girl's was cute. I'd like to have one ^^

My mistake during this trip was that I was still novice in traveling and I didn't prepare any itinerary. My plan was once I reached the city I would directly go to the information center to get a map and decided where to go. I didn't expect the Oktoberfest area wasn't close to the city center or any tourist information center. Fortunately, there was also group of people who also wanted to stroll around and they had printed out a map and I knew one of them and they didn't mind if I joined. So, Linh, Maliha, Tausifa (Maliha's friend), and I joined them. Since most of the group guys were Bangladeshi, Maliha and Tausifa actually could go along well with them. And since I had no idea about tourist attractions in that city, I agreed just to follow their itinerary.

Me in front of Oktoberfest main gate

Oktoberfest area in the morning

People are queuing to enter a beer tent

Munich travel mates

Bavarian costume. Pic is taken from here

Deutches Museum

Our first destination was Deutches Museum, the world's largest museum of science and technology. To go there, we needed to take public transportation. One of us had internet connection on his phone, so he became the navigator. In Munich, you can't buy the ticket at any tram or bus stop. I don't know if you can buy it from the driver but that time, we were confused then we just got onto tram that went to the Central Station without ticket. Munich Central Station was big and busy. We went to the customer service to ask where and how to buy pubic transportation ticket. Since we were group of 10 people, the woman suggested us to buy a group day pass, which was much cheaper. So, 1 person only spent 2.20 euro for a day pass! With day pass, you can use all public transportation in the city, or part of city that is covered with type of your pass, for one day.

Munich Central Station

By following our navigator, we could reach the place safely. The entrance fee of the museum for student was 4 euro.I had never been to a real science museum before (except Petrosains, which is more like for children), so I didn't expect anything for this visit.

The museum was truly huge! I think we spent more than 2.5 hours there to see each exhibits of the museum. The first exhibit we entered showed the development of ships and planes in Germany year by year. Many replicas and real aircrafts, used late in 1900s for World Wars were shown there. There were too many exhibits there and you wouldn't want to spend too much time. My suggestion when you visit a museum in limited time is to use your museum map smartly. Consider parts you want to see the most and time you'll spend there. If you still have time, you can choose whether to observe the rest or just to have a glance on it.

Bye, uncle :'(

Stuffs in electrical exhibition

Aircrafts exhibition

WIth Linh and Maliha

Noticed gamelan in music exhibition! 

Another electrical stuff

In front of Deutches Museum

After finished observing, we had lunch in front of the museum. I had Indomie goreng that I had prepare before leaving. It was sunny but the air was cold, so I prefer sitting under the sun. As we finished our lunch, we moved to the next destination: BMW Museum.

Marienplatz

We took a tram, whose direction to Central Station, and got off at Marienplatz to change to a subway. We didn't know that crowded square was actually one of tourist attraction. We took some pictures there before taking the subway. I, with my intuition, looked for a tourist information center there and found it. My purpose was just to have a city map, which they provided for 1 euro. I grabbed the map and inserted a coin of 1 euro into the box and ran to where my group was still taking picture. Then we rushed to the subway station. 

Then that I had a map, I could answer my curiosity about our trip. Yes, my friend had printed out one, but it was just a raw map without any useful information and, of course, he held it all the time. And those guys were always speaking in language that I didn't know, so I preferred not talking too much. And since I planned to go back to Munich next time, hopefully I would have been prepared by then. And, honestly, I like collecting maps ^^v

Roommates wefie!

Taking subway

It was my first time getting on a subway. The trains looked rather old but still worked well. I was excited to see many types of people taking subway: working men, women, children, teenagers. More excited if I could find someone reading a book in subway. Somehow, it seemed like an interesting habit.

At a subway stop

BMW Welt and Museum

Germany is the manufacturer of those luxury cars: BMW and Mercedes Benz. We had a chance to visit the BMW Welt, which iss kind of an exhibition center for the BMW vehicles. They showed many new cars which can be observed by the visitors. It is a cool place for people who are interested in cars and automotive. I got a chance to have a look at their new series of electric car. It was so cool and I was amazed by their development for this product. Then I remembered the issue in my country of which the government made the development of national electric car complicated by making the developers in problem. Miris...

After an hour, I felt tired and looked for a seat. When I was about to upload my picture on social media, I realized that the place where we were was not BMW Museum, to which my group was supposed to go. The real destination was on the opposite and we could just walk on the bridge connecting both buildings. As I knew this, I told the rest and they didn't believe me at first. Then we walked to the museum. Unfortunately, the entrance fee was expensive, 12 euro. Actually, only one person who really wanted to visit the museum, the rest didn't want to spend 12 euro. The problem was that since we had group ticket, we always had to travel in group. And it didn't seem fun to visit alone (while others were waiting), so he gave up on his intention.

At BMW Welt

BMW Museum as background

Allianz Arena

The next destination was Bayern München FC's stadium. I was super excited since it was one of places I wanted to visit the most in Europe! The place was quite far from city center but not really far from where we were, Yet we still had to take subway twice and get off at Fröttmaning stop. The stadium was likely 5-10 minutes by feet from the stop.

We took some pictures with the stadium as background and took a rest for a while. Then some of us wanted to join the stadium tour and the others preferred to go back to Oktoberfest. I was on stadium tour side. Again, the problem was that we had a group ticket. I didn't really understand actually, but it seemed like we had 2 tickets (1 ticket for 5 persons), but there were 4 people who wanted to join the tour, including me. Finally, one guy stayed and just waited for us outside the stadium, while the others left.

The stadium tour costed me 9 euro. There were 2 schedules left, at 16.45 in German and 17.30 in English. The tour could last around an hour. If we took the English one, we wouldn't manage to go back to Oktoberfest in time (or we must rush). So we decided to take the German one. Well, at least I could see how the inside looked like.

As the tour started, we walked to the supporter seat while the guide explained parts of the stadium in German. Not that I understood German, but he realized that some of the participants didn't speak German, so he made a brief summary in English after his long explanation in German which was quite helpful. So, the tour was basically visiting the arena, changing room, player's tunnel, seeing the field from an inch (not allowed to step on the grass :( ), and brief explanation about the particular material of the walls rounding the stadium (it's like plastic :o). Even though I didn't get the explanation clearly, I enjoyed the tour. We finished the tour at 6 and I couldn't buy any merchandise since the shop was already closed. Too bad.

Stadium that I used to select in Winning Eleven :v

Inside Allianz Arena

Bayern;s fake fan

Oktoberfest

It was already dark when we reached Oktoberfest area. It was completely different view with the one I was in the morning. It  was so crowded that I hardly walk, and full of drunken people. I must be careful with my path because I might step on broken glass. So, I could finally see how Oktoberfest looked: like a night market with drunken people. Ah, I forgot to mention besides beer tents, you can also find stalls providing typical German food, like würstel, pretzel, etc, or souvenirs, and some amusement rides and attractions. That's why I said it's like night market, but you don't have to compare it to Sekaten in Yogyakarta.

Oktoberfest in the evening

This is not Sekaten

Going back to Trento

We should have left Munich at 9 p.m. if the ESN guy, who was supposed to be responsible for us, got lost because he was too drunk. We finally left 30 minutes late without him. Nothing was special from the return journey. Only exhausted me with a thought of going back to this city someday to check some unvisited places.