Dortmans take over Oktoberfest!

Beer. That's mainly what this blog is going to be about; German beer and lots of it. But before we get to that, I better talk about Berlin, as that is where I first flew into. Berlin is a strange city and Berliners are even stranger. But I guess that's not such a surprise when you look at the history of the city. It has an alternative/artsy feel about it, everywhere you turn there is technicolour graffiti adorning the grey Soviet-style buildings or some sort of art installation. The first day I got there the sun was disarmingly shining (this tricked me into thinking the weather was always going to be like this...) so I went for a stroll down to the East Side Gallery, which is part of the old Berlin wall and has some of the best "graffiti" in the town, getting political, hippie and abstract all over the place. I also checked out Checkpoint Charlie, which had an exhibition on the history of the Berlin wall. A lot of it was news to me, considering I was 4 years old when the Berlin wall came down. You hear a lot about WWII when you're growing up, but not so much about the aftermath and what happened to Germany and the rest of Europe as a result of everything that went down. I learned even more about this history in the Topography of Terror, an exhibition about how Hitler came to power.

My last few days in Berlin were rainy and grey, and all the depressing history was kinda getting to me, so I caught a bus to rainy Prague instead and spent a few days kicking around this beautiful old city. I met a funny group of Aussie guys and a couple of girls, and we all decided to hit the town and see what Prague nightlife had to offer. The hostel took us to a weird club which was full of weird robotic lights and everything was decorated with scrap metal. It looked kinda cool, but the music was reggae/dub which is okay for a few songs, then it just gets a bit boring. So we legged it to another club called Mecca. This place had girls in leopard skin underwear dancing on podiums and crappy trance music, so us girls went downstairs to where they were playing 80s and 90s music and we totally got the dancefloor going. Then we went back to the hostel and played Uno for a while before sleep got the better of us. The next day the sun finally decided to make an appearance and we went for an adventure to the Prague Castle, which was basically a huge fortress... we were wandering around asking "Where is the castle?" only to be told "Uh, you're in it". Oh. Fantastic views were our reward as we reclined on a grassy patch in a vineyard and took in our bearings. That night Olivia and I went to see Norwegian singer Hanne Hukkelberg, which was a really cool experience, as I have missed seeing good live music. It was one of those surreal experiences where you walk outside after the 2 hour show and go "Oh, I'm in Prague... I kinda forgot for a while there."

So after Prague I caught a bus and train to Munich to meet up with the Dortmans crew for an epic Oktoberfest. Nothing can describe my excitement at arriving at the camping grounds to be greeted by Dan, Kate, Ana, Laura and Kate's friend Coxy. It was great to see some familiar faces again. So in true Dortmans style we had a few beers, which were needed to help us sleep in the arctic overnight temperatures in Munich. I didn't even have a proper sleeping bag, so I curled up in a little ball in layers of thermals, pants and jumpers and had a pretty unrestful night's sleep actually. But it didn't matter. Next morning we all got up at some ungodly hour, had breakfast and put on our most German drindles (actually Sam tells me they are called dirndls... we were calling them drindles the whole time!) and lederhosen for the opening day of the 200th Oktoberfest 2010.

Queues for the showers were phenomonal, so most of us decided to keep our shower tokens (yes, you had to pay one euro for the privelege of 5 minutes of hot water) and go dirty. Then Ana and Kate unveiled a surprise for us all... some yellow and green plastic kazoos. I repeat, some yellow and green plastic kazoos. These were to be our pride and joy for the rest of Oktoberfest, as we played "Guess the tune" and pretty much annoyed anyone else that didn't have a kazoo. After a few steins, we even resorted to communicating only via kazoo ("Uh, sorry Megan could you please kazoo that again, I didn't quite understand..." from Ana).

So we got a shuttle bus into the fest, to be greeted by a fairground complete with ferris wheel and 14 MASSIVE tents. Calling these thing tents is like calling Uluru a pebble. We picked a table outside the biggest tent, the Hofbrau and then waited until midday for the opening of the festival and the tapping of the kegs. We entertained ourselves in true Dortmans style by buying HUGE pretzels (everything is oversized at Oktoberfest) and playing "How many things can you do with a pretzel?" We were getting very creative and cracking ourselves up, and this was before even having any beers. Then at midday a procession of floats holding kegs and lots of people in traditional dress came through the crowd, even little kids were being weened early on as they hung off the floats with fake steins of beer. Parades of brass bands came through playing German songs and some of those German boys looked very cute in their lederhosen. Finally the kegs were ushered into their tents and the man kicked off the festival by tapping the keg, and fountains of golden beer poured into the steins. Beer wenches crowded around the kegs to fill up the dozen steins they held in their Herculean hands (I still have no idea how they hold so many of these... each stein holds one litre of beer!). And the race was on... each table tried to get the attention of any beer wench that came through the door, and I have never seen anyone get so excited over the arrival of beer. The energy was contagious. Many shenanigans ensued until... the big toilet disaster. Unfortunately, the downside of drinking so many beers is that you and every other beer drinker need to go to the toilet a lot. So, silly me, I left it quite late and got to the toilets only to find they were CLOSED. So Ana and I hurried to another tent where the line was majorly long. I viewed the situation and estimated roughly a 30 minute wait... I knew I didn't have that long, I needed to go NOW. So I farewelled Ana who again laughed at my misfortune (she got her comeuppance when she had to squat under a truck later on...mwa haha) and I ran across the road to where I found a Chinese restaurant. These wily entrepeneurs were charging one euro for the use of their toilets, but I swear it was the best euro I ever spent. No line, clean toilet, plenty of toilet paper. Ahhh. You can sometimes take these necessities of life for granted. I heard later there were many girls squatting under trucks and in parks because the toilet situation was so dire, and a few boys at our table even filled a few steins... eeeewwwWWWW!

Day two of Oktoberfest, we were up at 8am ready to do it all again. This time we scored a table inside at the Lowenbrau tent with a couple of other people we met. Our beer wench was a character, always pushing us to buy more beer and showing us how to eat a German sausage. We were seated next to a table of Marios and Luigis with cool handlebar moustaches. This time the drinks started flowing from 10am onwards, and the first one went down like nails. We ordered a German platter to accompany our beer, and this ended up being much more entertaining than it was delicious. Apart from ham, we weren't able to identify anything on the platter, so it became a fun game of "Guess what we're putting in your mouth?" There were some things that resembled dog food (I'm pretty sure they were) some black sausages and other weird looking things. The looks on their faces say it all.

Soon enough, everyone was dancing on tables, shouting "Prost!" and singing along to the German songs, despite not knowing a word of German (cheers being the exception). Beer was everywhere and things were gettin' loose (as Dan would say). Laura was falling asleep on her beer stein, Ana was falling asleep between a guy's crotch and I was ready to never drink another drop of beer in my life. It seems after seven litres in the one weekend I had reached my beer threshold. So we retired after another day of hard work. We had to get some sleep before the DORTMANS ROAD TRIP OF 2010.

We had a bit of trouble with car hire, but after some negotiation, we got two little cars for quite a good price. These were the honourable vestibules which would be carrying us forth to visit more Dortmanses in Holland. For some of us, this was the last stop in a Euro trip of a lifetime. So we piled into the cars and hit the Autobahn, Dan getting our little Ford Focus up to a cool 190 km/h. We made a pitstop where Laura found some fascinating self-cleaning toilets, which she claims were the highlight of her whole trip. Our fantastic navigation skills got us to Dinther in one piece (who needs GPS?) only my navigational skills were pretty dodgy, as I directed us to the wrong house. And Dan only drove on the wrong side of the road once, which is pretty good.

We were greeted by that famous Dortmans hospitality to a fantastic 3 course meal of soup, meat and veg and custard. We were beaming afterwards, after living on a diet of pretzels, beer and German sausages for two days. For once we went to bed without having any beer. We had a great night's sleep before sightseeing around Dinther and Den Bosch the next day. The Dortmans girls, Ilse, Noreen (sorry if I spelt it totally wrong!) and Marlies fed us some Dutch delicacies and then we ran around town before going back to the house for delcious pancakes and a party full of Dortmans. Which meant more beer. The next day Laura and I stuck around to catch up with some rellies on Oma's side. To our amusement, we found one of them riding a bike along the main street of Dinther. His name was Fritz and he was 84. After door knocking all around Dinther to try and find out where he lived, watching him cruise past on a bicycle was the highlight of my day. He had a cheeky grin and gave us a wave while doing a u-turn and nearly getting hit by a car in the process. He looked exactly like Oma and just as healthy.

We also met Oma's younger brother Wim, all of them lived within 5 minutes walking distance in the same town. We probably could have knocked on any door in the cute little town and they could tell us where they lived. Which is pretty much what we did!
Phew! What a long blog. I will have to tell you about New York and Central America another time. Hey, guess what? I will be home in about 5 weeks! Can't wait chicas!
xxoo Megan

I Amsterdam

I missed my first flight. And hopefully it will be the last. After waving goodbye to Jacqui and Sam at the border of Malaysia and Singapore, I thought the 3 hours I had allowed myself to get to Changi Airport in Singapore was a pretty generous margin. Turns out I was wrong. The bus took an eon to get there, and then about ten eons to get to the train station. I then had to catch a train, fretting all the way only to arrive at the airport at 10:15pm (my flight was at 10:55) at which time I had to catch a shuttle bus to another terminal. Running through the airport with 18kg on my back and probably about 6kg on my front I arrived breathless at the desk only to be told "Sorry, that flight closed about 30 minutes ago". Major bummer. But the ladies at the desk nicely arranged for me to get on the midnight flight to Heathrow (no extra charge) and after a 5 hour layover I arrived in Amsterdam, city of canals, coffee shops and one other thing starting with c...

I was set to have an early night, I really was. After roughly a 13 hour flight (not including the layover) and not so much sleep and another case of cankles (why does this always happen to me on long flights...) I thought it inevitable I would have an early night. But then I met these friendly Texans who insisted on buying me Jagerbombs and beers all night and of course who can refuse a friendly Texan (they probably have a gun...) so I had a massive night discovering Amsterdam. Yes, I went to a "coffee shop". No I didn't have any coffee. Yes, I walked through the red light district. No, I did not particularly enjoy seeing beautiful, young girls standing in red-lit windows with nothing but underwear on. There was something a little unsettling about girls being put on display in shop windows like merchandise. Not cool.

So after my big night out, I was wrecked for the next two. So I hired a bike and did my own little tour of Amsterdam's cobblestone streets, canals and museums. All the buildings are so old and quaint, tall skinny brick things poised on the edge of canals crossed by arched bridges, it's everything I imagined a European city to be. I have had more art education since I arrived in Holland than in all my years at school and university. I have seen paintings from the best that Holland has to offer, from Vermeer (yes, I saw the Girl with the Pearl Earring and she was more beautiful than Scarlett Johanssen) to Van Gogh to Rembrandt. And I've already had a taste of the European male attention... just walking down the street, guys will call out to you on their scooters or just strike up random conversations with you outside shops, hoping it will lead to you spending the whole night at a bar with them... this doesn't happen to me in Australia. Well, apart from wolf whistling from construction workers... I think guys here are just a little too confident. It's an expensive place though, I think I spent more in a few days in Amsterdam than in two weeks in Malaysia.

So after exploring every nook and cranny of Amsterdam I hopped on a train down to Rotterdam, which is the modern sister of Amsterdam. The whole place was bombed flat in the war, so now they have gone crazy with all sorts of weird architecture. I stayed in these "cube Houses" which were basically big Rubiks Cube looking buildings poised diagonally in the air. I did a day trip to Den Haag (The Hague) which was also a nice quaint old city with the palace where Queen Beatrix lives and some more art museums. Everyone was outside drinking al fresco, as it was a beautiful Spring day. How very European.

So the plan after Rotterdam was to head down to Vorstenbosch where my relatives live. Then I get this email from my crazy cousin Paul saying he was in Amsterdam; I didn't even realise was in Europe, let alone Amsterdam. Naturally I couldn't let this opportunity slide, so I went back to Amsterdam for another crazy night. The place was packed with people catching international trains after the volcanic eruption in Iceland. Nature wins again.

Saturday, I catch a train to Den Bosch to see my relatives. One hour on the train is all it takes (to pretty much go from one end of Holland to the other, haha... well almost) and I am met at the station by my very pregnant cousin Eefje. Her baby is due in just over a week. I arrived to a warm welcome from my relatives Jan and Ine, with the assurance that I really will only be staying for a week or two, and had my first delicious home cooked meal in a while. So now I have been doing a round robin of dinners and outings with relatives and various other people in the neighbourhood. What a hard life! The countryside here is very picturesque and green, but it's not like Australia where you can drive for 2 hours and not see a town, there is a town every 2 minutes. The people here are so lovely, everyone knows everyone and they are so welcoming.

Yesterday Jan took me on a tour of Dinther, the place where my Oma lived and where my dad was born. The old farmhouse they lived in is still there, albeit a little changed (it's all renovated inside and the stable is now a car dealer). For those of you who don't know, a quick rundown on family history: my Opa and his wife lived in Dinther with seven children. During World War II, a bomb meant for the Germans exploded in the farmhouse and killed his wife and 3 of their children. My Opa then married my Oma and they lived there for another few years (during which time they had my dad) and then when he was 4, they migrated to Australia for a better life.

So we knocked on the door and the nice people who live there let us come inside and look around. The spookiest part was going under the house into the cellar... you can just imagine the family huddling under there while bombs exploded above ground. They then made a fatal decision to run to the bomb shelter in the backyward, which was when the bomb hit. The bomb shelter is filled in now, but it was surreal being there in the very spot. We then went to the church where my Oma got married and next door was a cemetery where the grave of my Opa's first wife and three kids were buried.

The Catholic church just made me sad. People used to put so much value in religion, as you can see from the massive amount of time and money they have put into their places of worship. I'm not saying the size of the church is a measure of your faith, but it was obviously a big part of their daily lives back in the day. You can't go anywhere here without hearing the church bells ring or where you don't have a view of the church steeple. It was the centre of every town. But every day in the paper here there is talk about the demise of the Catholic church. Not many people actually attend church here, especially not young people and a lot of the churches are closing down. I guess religion isn't so relevant to people any more. I don't find the Catholic church all that relevant either, but man they built some fantastic buildings and funded some amazing artwork. I almost feel like we're coming to the end of an era. I just hope that God doesn't get lost in the confusion.

I visited my first Dutch school on Monday, as I went to Jan's class (10-12 year olds) to talk about Australia. They bombarded me with questions for one hour, which was fun, especially ones like "Do you have a boyfriend?" and "Do people eat cactuses in Australia?" and "Do kangaroos really box?" Haha. Tomorrow I go to another school where they are learning about Australia and want me to talk about it. I'm like a touring circus act.

Today my cousins Ilse and Mieke took me on a tour of Den Bosch, an old 17th century town near here. We did a boat tour of the canals that go underneath the city, did a historical tour and I got to eat the famous Bosche Bolle that everyone keeps talking about. It was a delicious combination of chocolate, cream, custard and pastry. Lekker! Then I went to the windmill in Dinther and got some obligatory photos of a windmill in Holland. Come on, it's like getting a photo of a koala in Australia - it has to be done!

Trying (very hard) to learn some Dutch while I'm here, but every time I try to make a g sound (you know, the sound like you have some phlegm stuck in the back of your throat) I sound ridiculous. But I will persist!

Groetjes! (YOU try pronouncing it - it's easy, [phlegm sound ]+[rolllling rrr sound] + oot + yez)
Megan

Alpine Country

If any of you talked to me last week (on Facebook or wherever) you will know that I was feeling particularly homesick. I was staying at a place where virtually no one spoke English, I had no luck getting a Visa and I was feeling a little alone and pointless in this alien world called Japan. One night I spent about 40 minutes trying to get a phone card to work to call home, then I finally got it to work only to find it would only last 7 minutes. I was standing in a phone booth in Kyoto in the middle of the night blubbering into the phone to my mum. She said it would be a good story to tell my kids.

But after that, all the job offers started flowing in. I got two offers of work at the snow and two working in Osaka teaching English. I ended up taking the one in the Japanese Alps at a ski lodge in Hakuba called Aqua Alpine. I get to wait tables and pour drinks at the bar, get cheap accommodation and food and then in the afternoons I get to hone my snowboarding skills. But more about that later.

Before I took the job I travelled down to Hiroshima, a pretty cool city in its own right. On the way I stopped at Himeji to see Himeji Castle, a cool building that the whole city basically grew around back in the 1800s. People are so much nicer in these smaller towns! I hadn't walked 200m from the station when an old man struck up a conversation with me about Australia. In Hiroshima I went to the Peace Memorial Park where there was a building still in the condition it was in on August 6th 1945 when the Americans blew Hiroshima off the map by dropping an atomic bomb. I went through the museum and unlike the Vietnam War Museum, it was very balanced and presented Japan as being just as responsible as America in the events that lead up to the dropping of the bomb. The museum was more about trying to stop the development of nuclear bombs and trying to achieve peace. It pretty much dobbed in all the countries that still possess nuclear weapons (you could imagine which ones they would be) and had a lot of stuff about the after effects, etc. While looking at the Children's Peace Monument I got hassled by some lovely ladies from Jehovah's Witness. You can't escape them.

Then I caught a ferry to a little island called Miyajima which was a cute little place. There were deer everywhere hassling people for food and a floating temple on the shore. I wanted to do a hike to the top of the mountain on the island, but I ran out of time as it takes 4 hours. That night I had the best meal in Japan so far. Hiroshima is famous for its Okanami-yaki which is a type of savoury pancake cooked teppanyaki style. They cook the pancake then just heap a whole lot of stuff on top - cabbage, noodles, squid, prawns and bacon all with delicious sauces and spices. It was so good. And the guys who cooked it were a lot of fun, trying out their English on me. I washed it all down with a glass of sake for a perfect Japanese meal.

The next day I went back to Kyoto, before heading up the mountains to my new job. The train ride was amazing, as was the fact that trains even go out there. They must have to clear the tracks of snow ten times a day. It was snowing when I arrived and everything was covered in a thick layer of white powder. When I woke up the next morning and looked out the window, it was cool to see the snow falling down, and I felt like a little kid waking up on Christmas day, even though I've only ever known hot Christmases. This place is owned by Aussies and partly by Steven Bradbury, the guy who famously won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics by letting everyone else fall over. Most people that work here are also Aussie, apart from two Japanese girls I am sharing a room with. I help them with their English and they help me with my Japanese :) Not that I need it up here, the place is overrun by Aussies.

I went snowboarding for only the second time in my life yesterday and it was amazing. Everyone at the hotel rallied together to lend me some gear and I got out there and did the Beginners run about 5-6 times. By the end I wasn't falling over quite so much and was pulling off some nice turns. I could get good at this by the end of March!

So that's where I'm at right now, and I will probably stay here until the end of March before flying to Malaysia. I will have to upload some snow shots onto Facebook at some point.

Keep the messages coming, I love hearing about what you're all up to!

x meg x

Lost in Tokyo Translation.

Well, if I thought things would become less interesting when I was on my own, I was wrong.

My last few days with Ash were spent literally shopping until we dropped. Bangkok must have some of the cheapest shopping in the world. So we went around town in buses, tuk-tuks and taxis to some of the biggest markets and shopping centres in Bangkok. Among these were Chatujak Market (15,000 stalls), Pat Pong Market (best place for knock-off handbags, watches, etc.), Khaosan Road (backpacker central) and Union Mall. Union Mall was something we stumbled upon and it was definitely somewhere undiscovered by tourists. But we began to get paranoid that people were ripping us off simply because we were foreigners. This made us coin the code "NFF" which means "Not For Foreigners". My feet were so sore after this marathon shopping fest.

We also took a tour to a place 2 hours out of Bangkok where we saw the Bridge over the River Kwai and rode on the "Death Railway", which wasn't dangerous, it was called that because in WWII the Japanese made the prisoners of war build a railway so they could get supplies in to their soldiers and a lot of them died building it. We also got to ride an elephant (yay for Ash!) and ride a bamboo raft. The next day we did the floating market, which is pretty cool to see. Basically there are a series of canals where people float around on boats and try to sell you stuff. We had people pulling our boat over with hooks and trying to get us to buy their stuff. It was crazy. Ash got to feed an elephant, but alas, she was trying to stick the food up its trunk. For those of you zoologocally educated, you will know that this is like trying to stick food up someone's nose. Poor little elephant.

So then Ash left me :( and I was all alone. I stayed at a hotel near the airport for my last couple of nights and it was definitely an NFF area. Everyone was staring at me when I walked down the street and the Thai boys were wolf whistling at me, which was a little unnerving. I met a guy at the hotel from Brisbane, who reminded me of someone I know. He had rented a motorbike and said he needed someone to ride on the back and hold a video camera for him so he could film the ride into Bangkok. Having no idea who this guy was and having had so much bad luck with motorbikes previously, I would like to say I declined the offer. But then that wouldn't be very interesting would it? So I jumped on the back and off we went. Of course, I didn't realise then that he had no idea how to get into Bangkok from where we were, which was about an hour out.

So we kept stopping at intersections and tapping on taxi windows to get directions. Not the most effective GPS. We even found ourselves at a service station at one point surrounded by workers trying to draw us a mini map. So we ended up riding around for hours until we found signs leading to the airport, which was near our hotel. But we went too far, then got stopped at a tollbooth because motorbikes aren't allowed on expressways apparently. By now it was nearly 1am and I had dirt all over my face and was about to fall asleep and I had to get up at 5:30am to go to the airport. He started swearing at the toll guys and I thought this is it. This is when I get arrested and have to stay in Thailand forever. But the toll guys were actually very nice. They showed us where to do a u-turn then and we got back. Then, just 200m away from our hotel we were stopped by a police barricade. What luck hey. When I got back I felt like I had ingested the whole smog cloud hanging over Bangkok and then some.

I arrived in Tokyo a few days ago and caught a train out to my backpacker's hostel. I'm not going to lie to you, I was scared out of my wits and I had a bit of a cry on the train. My first impression is that Japanese people are quite cold and uninviting. No one smiles at you and the cold inidifferent way they look at you in passing is almost worse than the wolf-whistling from the Thai boys. The more I learn, however, the more I realise they are particularly shy and also not so used to foreigners. Japan has a very low immigration rate, which is probably just as well, because the small island country is packed full of people. When you look out at the sea of faces, it's very rare to see anyone not Japanese, or at least Asian. You could imagine how I must stand out. So I was feeling pretty sorry for myself the night I came in.

Then Claire walked into my dorm. She was a friendly American who lives in Korea but speaks fluent Japanese. She invited me on a day trip to Nikko. Having no idea who she was, or where Nikko is, I of course said yes. She was a very handy travelling companion to have. We caught a train to Nikko, about 2.5 hours north of Tokyo and it was 2.5 times better than Tokyo. The place was a very quiet and peaceful mountain village, very picturesque. We were surrounded by dark mountains sprinkled with snow at the top. All the little shops and cafes were traditional Japanese style with sliding doors and everything wooden.

We walked uphill to some temples and shrines which they must have paid millions to restore, because they looked magnificent. All gold/bronze trimming and intricately carved archways, poles, dragon heads, colourful wall and roof murals - everything you think of when you imagine Japan. Claire was an invaluable guide. At one point an old Japanese man muttered something near us and she turned around and blasted him in Japanese then stormed off. I was like what was that about?? Apparently he had said something like "very big" in slang Japanese and she thought he was talking about her, as she is quite tall for a girl, even by Western standards. So she turned around and said "I speak Japanese and that was very rude!" then stormed off. In hindsight, she said he may have been talking about the bloody big temple behind us.

We went further up the mountain and it was COLD. We saw a beautiful waterfall that was falling on rocks covered in snow, it was very pretty. We had lunch in this cute little Japanese restaurant where we were the only customers and the old Japanese lady looked after us with some suba noodles. It was deliciously warm. Once again I was grateful for Claire, because the menu was all in Japanese.

We then went to visit a friend of Claire's in a place about 45 minutes away. While we were waiting for her at the train station, Claire convinced me to try on a kimono. I thought why not, it will make a good photo. So next thing you know I'm walking out of there having bought the whole kit and kaboodle - kimono, obi, undergarments - for about $70 aussie dollars, which is pretty cheap.

Then to top off my day we went to a quintessential Japanese restaurant with low tables and cushions around. The food was delicious. The wait staff were uber-polite, bowing to us and treating us like royalty. I let the girls order, as once again the menus were all in Japanese. But they taught me a helpful phrase "osusume wa nan desuka?" which means "what would you recommend?" for next time I can't read. All in all a great Japanese day - the food was great, the people friendly and the scenery breath-taking (or maybe that was the cold). I just had to get out of Tokyo.

Now I'm job hunting without much success yet. Fingers crossed!

Love Megan