Goodbye Paradise - Oktoberfest [Day Three]

After a bit of a shaky start (mildly hungover) I emerged from my tent at about 9am. Today I would be leaving paradise. After some breakfast and fresh air, I discovered I was not nearly as hungover as I should be. And everyone I talked to was saying the same thing. Apparently due to the pure German beer that can only be made out of three ingredients - hops, yeast and some kind of starch. No preservative or chemicals. Those Germans are pretty smart eh.

After waiting about an hour for a shitty shower that I had to pay €1 for, I packed my gear and got organised for our Munich city walking tour. If you are a 'hardcore' follower, you'll know I have been to Munich once before, and taken a walking tour. To be honest the TopDeck one was not as good... but still interesting. And it was nice to be wandering around in the sunshine in shorts and a t-shirt rather than wrapped up in sub-zero temperatures like last time. We visited Marienplatz (Munich main square) with the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) and Glokenspeil. We went into Hofbräuhaus which was quite cool - they even have 'stein lockers' there for the seasoned drinkers to leave their stein!


One good part was that I finally got to see the inside of the Frauenkirche (Cathedral of Our Lady), which has a tile with a single footprint 'stamped' into it - said to be the devils. There is a long story behind it, but the gist of it is the architect tricked the devil into helping him build the chuch. When the devil found it, he was pretty upset, and stomped his foot. The cathedral itself is beautiful inside - massive stained glass windows, towering white pillars and gold trim.


The tour finished, and after wandering around Munich for all of five minutes I bump into Paul (TNT crew). Seriously... It was just getting freaky how we kept bumping into each other. We visited Weinhaus Schneider beer hall for a nice brew and pretzel soup (soooooo good). We made our way back to Hofbräu to meet the rest of the crew. After a couple of quick goodbyes I had to head off to catch my bus.

We departed Munich at about 2pm on Monday. The return coach trip was OK, again about as good as one might expect. Everyone was pretty tired from a solid two and a half days of drinking, so I got a decent sleep. We made really good time to Calais, arriving at around 6am. Unfortunately we couldn't get an earlier ferry so had to wait around until about 9am to cross the channel. The crossing went smoothly, on the way getting to the the amazing white cliffs of Dover. We arrived back in London about midday on Tuesday, tired and smelly.
 

My final words of wisdom - just go! No matter what the cost, you won't regret it.