September 18-20 Munich, Germany (Oktoberfest)
Ok, so it seems like forever since I was last on my train ride to Munich. But it has been a great few days of traveling meeting up with new and old friends. So first when I arrived in Munich it was about 3:30pm so I went straight to my hostel to check in and drop my backpack off. All the hotels and hostels are on one side of the train station in a 3 block square, so it was easy to find. I got all checked in and the first thing I did was shower and shave and take a nap because I still had not slept for 2 days. So after an amazing 3 hour recharge of the batteries I was good to go again. My hostel was very nice and I meet up with my new friends (Monica and Anna) from Santa Clara that I personally had never met before but they were friends of Brody’s and both girls ended up being amazing people. So around 9pm the three of us went to go explore Munich for our first night out. We went to a brewery that was over by our place that must have had over a hundred picnic tables out on the side of the brewery full of people having a good time eating and drinking…. So we went and sat down and started meeting people all around us from Ireland one table of guys and another table of people from the US and Europe. So we started there but it stopped serving around 11, but we hung around and didn’t end up leaving until a little after midnight. After that we went out with one of our new friends from another table that took us to a few bars but just ended up landing at a sports bar of all places. It was already late by that time and we all didn’t get back to our hostels tell around 4am. The next morning the plan was to wake up early so that we could get a table at one of the Beer tents at the official start of Oktoberfest. That didn’t quite happen…. We didn’t get to the tents tell around 11 so by that time it was completely full and huge lines to get in so we just went and ate and went back to our hostels to take a nap and take a go at it later that night. Later that night we didn’t get going again tell later so we just made a pact that we would make sure we got up early and got to the tents early. So we ate and went to old town Munich to look around and find a place to hang for a bit of the night, so we did. We found this really busy bar that looked fun, and of all things it was called Sosalitos. The DJ was playing about half American music that we could understand so it worked out well, plus we learned some new German songs too. We ended up meeting 3 other Europeans that were next to us and started talking more and more with them and had a great time. Nothing to crazy but we got back to our beds around 1am. That next morning we woke up at 7 and met and left at 8am to get to the tents early and we did they opened the doors around 8:30am which we had no problem finding a table. So we started talking to the people around us and there were a few guys from Texas and California also an Australian couple and a party of Korean guys. So we had a good mix at our table but there were so many more people that we met that day at other surrounding tables it was amazing. I had more fun just meeting new people than anything else (almost). So to start the day before we heard they didn’t start serving tell noon so we had brought in a few beers each so that we could do that but to our surprise they started serving at 9am Sunday so we started right in there with the rest of them nice and early. By the way one of the guys from Texas next to us at the end of Saturday at the same tent the day before blew the 2nd highest BAL (Blood Alcohol Level) in all of Oktoberfest and won a certificate from the police. If you want to know he blew a .46!!! They say that a person should be in a comma after a .40 which is truly amazing! Anyways so we started having a great time and a few hours into the festivities I have had 3 stines which are about a liter each so was doing good and I still need to get my bag because I was going to be taking the train from Munich to Klagenfurt, Austria later that night to meet up with another friend Anna. So around 1pm I had been going around talking with people and meeting new people around I couldn’t find Monica and Anna , so I hung out at our table for another hour and decided to say my goodbyes to all my new friends and leave because I don’t think I could have done a 6th stine. So I got my gear and made my way to the train station which is an obstacle in itself plus my 40 pound backpack. So I got to the train station and asked what platform the next train to Klagenfurt was and they advised me to one of them, but the lady instead of Klagenfurt tried to send me to Frankfurt Germany. Which is the opposite direction and I didn’t realize tell I was already on the train, so I had to get off the train and hope on another train back to Munich to take another train which was the night train to Klagenfurt, Austria.
September 21-23 Klagenfurt, Austria.
So I arrived in Klagenfurt at about 5am in the morning and I had not been able to get a hold of my friend Anna that is there playing professional volleyball since a couple days before so my idea was that I was just going arrive, connect to the internet there in the train station, and call her. But I couldn’t connect to any of the networks in the station and none of the internet cafés were open tell 9am so I just checked my backpack in a locker and started exploring. After a few hours and a couple of cups of coffee I was able to get into one of the internet cafés and use their internet to get a hold of Anna and she we finally met up. So after I got all situated at her place, which is very nice, we took off together around the town to do a little exploring. I didn’t know this before, but Klagenfurt is one of the main vacation getaways for all the wealthy Austrians. We ended up at the “Worther See”, which is the lake that borders the town. It is a little smaller then Whiskey town lake but very very beautiful. It is surrounded by big and beautiful luxury resorts and personal Villas that line the lake; it is an amazing sight to see. Anna and I walked around the lake for about a mile and had coffee at a little café that had a dock right on the water. When we walked back we met up with 2 of her teammates Sophie and Birgit, who are only 20 but both Austrian from other towns but both speak English pretty well and both go to the University there in Klagenfurt. After we soaked up some sun we headed back to Anna’s and took a nap, then went to dinner with 3 or her teammates and a few friends which concluded the night. I had such an amazing time in Klagenfurt and I am so grateful for Anna letting me stay, she was such a great host and is always so amazingly friendly and fun to be around. Also Sophie and Birgit were a great surprise to meet as well and hopefully we will meet up again later on in our travels. I am on my way now to Vienna, Austria which is the capital of Austria. I am arriving around 11:30pm and then off to my hostel for the night. Hope all is well back home….

September 24-25 Vienna, Austria
Well when I got to Vienna it was already late around about midnight, so most of the information booths were closed so I couldn’t really get directions on how to get a map or get to my Hostel. So I had to grab a cab to take me to the Hostel which was luckily not too far from the train station. I ended up in a 4 bedroom dorm with 2 girls from Canada and another guy from Slosberg, Austria. But everyone was asleep when I got in so I followed suit. The next morning I got up and had breakfast which was at the hostel and planed out my trip for the day and then set off walking around Vienna. Vienna is very beautiful and has a lot of big old buildings. I think the thing that amazed me the most was that all the buildings in the whole city were between 5-7 stories high. Everything was just so big and the architecture that went along with it was just impressive. I walked around Vienna for about 6 hours taking my own self-guided tour going to museums, but it’s expensive to get into the museums. So I snuck into a few. When I got back to my hostel I showered and got ready to go on a pub crawl that was going on just a few blocks away from my hostel so I got ready and a little before nine I went down to go check it out. The only thing was when I got there they were not having it for the next few weeks because of Oktoberfest. So I just went back to my hostel and decided to play some pool with some of my roommates and we played for a few hours and drank then they had to plan the next day of travel so they left and I found 3 more friends from Germany that were on a break from their med school classes so we got to playing and drinking and had a great time also in the middle of it we added another wolf to our wolf pack. An Aussi named Chuck that was also traveling alone. So we sent the night drinking and playing pool and just shooting shit tell about 3am when we all went to bed because they were closing the pool table. The next morning I got up again packed and checked my bag downstairs as I checked out so I could do some more exploring. I had a few places on the map that I wanted to check out still so I took off to go do that because my night train didn’t take off tell 7:30. So I walked around for another good 6 hours came back to the hotel to plan my trip the next day because when I get to Rome it will be 9am. So I scheduled my trip and booked my hostel, this time with a map in hand and the directions on how to get there from the train station. So that’s about it to now. I just slept almost about 10 hours. They don’t quite make these sleepers for people over 5’10 I don’t think, but it was fine and I slept steady. So I am ready for Rome. Hope is well back in the states……..

Getting to Munich, Germany from Poland

Wednesday, September 16
So it’s been an interesting last few days over here with not a lot of sleep going on. First off I left off just getting to Brody’s place in Poland. After that night Brody didn't have practice tell late in the day so we had all morning to cruise the town and for him to show me where everything is. He informed me that it would take that long... haha. Well we started off making a list of things that we thought that we would want for the next couple days because I was leaving in the next day for who knows how long and Brody for the weekend of basketball on the coast. So we started by going to the supermarket which is surprisingly easy and has lots of US products. The good thing about Poland I have to say is that everything is really cheap. From there he showed me where to exchange my money for Zloty (which is Polish dollars) they don't have the euro yet in Poland. After that we cruised around town and Brody showed me all his other hot spots he visits. From there I started getting used to the layout of the town; it is small but busy during the days. The weather has been nice low 70's for the highs and drops in the 50's at night.

The next day was Thursday September 17th:

Brody and I got up early like we always do. I impressed in the fact of how easy my transition has been with the time zone changes. Brody had a double day of practice that day so I spent most of the morning packing my Backpack for the first time and I managed to make everything fit in it that I needed with a little extra room. So at 2pm I left for Gdansk to catch the train to Munich. That when everything went a little crazy. First off Polish rail lines are very very slow and don't have fast rails like the ones the rest of Europe has. Second Poland isn't even included with the Euro-rail its completely different so my Euro-rail pass didn't work there either so I had to wait tell I got to Berlin before I could use it to its fullest. My Euro-rail pass works that I get 10 days of Travel within 2 months anywhere I like in, Italy, France, Germany, and Austria. Sorry got a little side tracked but back to the Gdansk Train station. I got to the Gdansk train station around 4pm and the next train out wasn't tell 6:15 so I had to wait around tell then. I proceeded then to take 3 different trains and a 45min bus ride to change stations and about 1am I stopped in a little place called (Szczecin Gowny, Poland) I was supposed to trade trains at that point at 3am but when I went to check. The information people informed me that there was no train at that time and re-routed me to Berlin on the next train at 5:17am. Sooo I got to stay in this whole in the wall train station with about 15 other people which I think 10 were every nighters there (homeless). With saying that those 5 hours might have been the most eventful of my trip thus far. It started off with all the bums sleeping on the chairs while the Security Guard would come in every 30 minutes and run out the 10 or so homeless guys which they left then 5 min later they would be back and another 30-45 min later the Security guard was back kicking them out again. This went on for the entire 5 hours. That was it either, I could fall asleep so I was up watching this charades while this was going on another homeless man came in with a German Sheppard and tied it up where else, but 3 seats down from me. So this new guy I think took something from another bum that was sleeping and all out war broke loose. I was reading my book (Catcher in the Rye) when this all went down so I didn't really see or understand what was going on. So the two men started running around like they were playing a game of tag. The guy would try and come back in the room and the other man would run him out. This went on for the last 2 hours and I was so out of it I didn't know what to do, so I just watched with amazement on how I got myself to this point...hahaha So after that I got on my train and it was a very easy travel over to Berlin. There I booked my train to Munich, Germany and I am writing these last few days on my way there now on my mini notebook. After going through Poland rail way I feel like everything else here is easy as can be. So my next adventure will be Munich for Oktoberfest. I was going to make my trip and Oktoberfest one entry but just had so much that has happened over the last 24 hours I couldn't wait to let everyone know. PS I have not gotten any sleep for the last 24 hours and I don't think I will so it should be an interesting night... I think there is going to be a lot of coffee in my near future....

The beginning of my adventure

So here we go this is my first entry into my blog/ journal, I am going to try and keep this up to date as much as possible on events going on in my life as I travel around on my new adventure through Europe. So this is where the journey starts with me, packing and unpacking not just my own stuff but the many miscellaneous things that Brody has decided that he might need and gifts for the random people he has met already, which includes: 2 pairs of basketball shoes for himself and his team owner, a package of BBQ sauce and 2 packs of Marlboro cigarettes for the guy that owns the café across the street from his apartment??? I agree with Kenny when he said that “Polish people have the most random specialty items”. My mom and dad drove me to the Sacramento airport and within ten minutes and I have already received a call from my mom making sure I made it through safe. I left Friday September 11th to LA to start my big adventure. I will be in LA visiting my girlfriend Archana as much as I can but we will see how much time that she will be able to take off now that she is Law School at USC. She is busy 24/7 so anytime I can manage to get her away from the library will be a feat.

So on Monday September 14th at 7pm I flew out of LAX on a eleven and a half hour flight to Frankfurt Germany. The flight was ok but very very long. The plane had good movies to choose from but I took some sleeping pills and a couple of glasses of wine later I was out.... Oh and I have to include that the lady that sat next to me only spoke Italian so let’s just say it was a quite flight with a lot of hand signals mostly. When I arrived in Germany I had a 3 hour layover tell my connecting flight to Poland so I started walking around the Frankfurt airport which I now know is one of the ten biggest airports in the world so I was able to stretch my legs out after that last flight. My flight to Poland was just a quick flight only about an hour and a half. I sat next to a really nice guy named Adam that was from Poland but grew up in Australia so I was able to talk to someone for the first time in a while, which is one of those things that a person doesn’t experience tell they leave North America. We exchanged stories for a good amount of time and we traded info because he was also a fellow Couch Surfer, so hopefully we can meet up again. I arrived in Poland at 7:30pm polish time which is 9 hours ahead of the US. The Gdansk airport is very small so it didn’t take much time to get my bags (which all made it there safely) and head to the pick-up area where Brody was picking me up at. Brody got there in typical Angley fashion about thirty minutes later. I will give him a break though he did have a game earlier. I don’t know who was more excited me or him when he got there but I think it was pretty mutual. We took a Taxi about 40 minutes back to Brody’s town Starogard Gdanski ,( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starogard_Gda%C5%84ski ). It should have taken an hour but by the way our taxi was driving, I don’t think that there are any speed limits in Poland... I think they are all amateur Indy 500 drivers. We made it though safe and sound, and we got my stuff all set up and unloaded my bag of: specialty items, my wide range of movies, and about a half million powerbars my mom loaded my bag with. All of it has been a great experience already and I can’t wait for more. I leave Poland Thursday night for Munich Germany for Oktoberfest so I am sure I will have lots to share after that. Hope all is well back in the states…