I have spent the vast majority of this week catching up on schoolwork because I spent last weekend in Munich enjoying the madness that is known around the world as "Oktoberfest." It happened to be the 200th Oktoberfest! The week of work is well worth the weekend of fun! I am lucky enough to have a friend who is working in Munich to not only give me a place to crash, but also show me around the city and surrounding area.
Munich is a beautiful city and I'm lucky to have been able to get around to see the Olympic Grounds, some of the main "old city" as well as the BMW factory! Unfortunately, they didn't let me take out a car...
The first thing I will note, is that Oktoberfest was very different from what I expected. Of course it is massive, but it is also much more family oriented than I expected. There are just as many rides, fair games, food and restaurants as there are beer tents. I'm happy I was able to see German families wearing dirndls and lederhosen walking around and having generally a good time as opposed to just foreigners over-indulging.
Another amazing facet of this festival was the amazing food. I expected the festival to just be about drinking, but the culinary aspects of the festival were just as impressive to me. I was able to have such traditional foods as Schweinshaxe (roast ham), Brezn (Pretzels), Weisswurst (white sausage), and Knodel (potato dumplings). I am going to miss the German food!
I was also able to get out of the city and check out the Alps for a bit. We went to a beautiful town called Garmische, just outside of Munich. While this was an absolutely gorgeous place, one of the most exciting things about it was driving on the Autobahn to get there! I have to admit, driving the Autobahn through Bavaria is a greater adrenaline rush than driving from Columbia to St. Louis on 70 behind trucks.
Schoolwork has still been a bit difficult to adjust to. Back at Mizzou, I was able to gauge my process throughout the semester through tests, quizzes, and papers. Here, it's more all or nothing and I will find out how I did at the end of the semester. Further, classes are very small (largest are 13), and the students are expected to have read all of the information and come with enough knowledge to teach one another. I honestly didn't think this process would work at all, but in Organizational Change and Consultancy classes it seems to work very well. It has been an interesting practice in group dynamics for me. Back home, most of my small classes were still dominated by the professor. Either way, I have to wait until the end of the period to find out if this has prepared me enough! And whenever my head is stuck in the books I can remember this:
