Hey it’s only been eight days since my last post, better than I expected!
Because almost the entire last post was about traveling outside of Florence, I figured I should start this with a bit of information about what my day to day life is like here:
Unfortunately, my terrible sleep schedule followed me abroad. Every day except Thursday (when I have my only morning class), I wake up later than I want to. After spending as much time as possible getting ready for the day-read: deciding which of my 5 shirts to wear-I usually go to the grocery store. It’s about a 10 minute walk from my apartment, so I can’t stock up on things for the week like I would at home. Well... I could if I brought a rolling suitcase to the store. There also aren’t preservatives in the food here, so even if I did buy a week’s worth of groceries, nothing would last that long. Sad!
Once I have my groceries, I make lunch and deeply contemplate what to do for the rest of the day: walk to a piazza to read/write, find a dog and follow it around all day, practice my opening number for when I become an international pop sensation… the options are endless.
(Okay, yeah, my daily life is not very exciting. It’s basically just like being at home but with more cooking and a prettier walk to class).
Somehow I managed to plan a trip for every weekend this semester, which is a little overwhelming, but obviously also exciting.
I met Lauren (!!!!!!! SOMEONE FROM NEBRASKA YAY NEVER CLOSE THE YEARBOOK) and her friend Hallie in the Munich airport on Friday night, after being yelled at by an airport employee for apparently waiting in the wrong place? He was yelling in German so I just smiled and laughed until he got annoyed and walked away. The three of us took a train to the hotel, where we met Hallie’s friend Bri and got in trouble for having four people in a two-person room. Off to a good start!!
The next morning, Lauren and I spent over an hour looking for dirndls (the traditional German outfits tourists wear to Oktoberfest to feel like they’re immersing themselves in local culture) because none of the stores opened before 10 a.m. Once we had our outfits, though, we had plenty of time to drink [too much] beer, eat pretzels and ride an abnormally fast Ferris wheel.
Naturally, we spent most of our day in the tent where guys got up on a table approximately every 20 minutes to either sing "Hey Baby" or do some chant that literally nobody else knew except them. At one point we thought we were sitting next to a rugby team or something, but they were actually just frat bros. Not surprising (still fun, though).
By 3 p.m., all of the tents were fairly full, so we decided to take a break and go back to the hotel for a quick nap. That turned into three hours of sleep, which killed all of our motivation to do anything that night.
Lauren and I still attempted to go see the giant glockenspiel cuckoo clock, which we were told runs every hour from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Apparently, that wasn’t true, so we basically just wandered around for two hours before eventually getting dinner (pizza- I literally traveled from Italy to eat pizza in Germany lol). Don’t worry!! We saw the clock do its thing on Sunday morning!! It really wasn’t that exciting, but that’s okay!!
We also met a British guy who tried to hit on us by making fun of us (where is the logic?) then stayed in our room for three (3!!) hours, his drunk friend who disappeared for four hours and showed up at midnight with McDonalds, and some German men who taught us about the history of Oktoberfest.
All in all, I’d call it a successful weekend even though I almost ran out of money and had literally 2 Euros to spare after paying for my taxi home from the airport. Oops.
Thanks for tuning in to this week of MaddieStudies Abroad (Maddie Studies Abroad or Maddie Stu Dies Abroad, you choose). Catch ya next time!
P.S. Just so everyone is aware, this blog exists primarily as a procrastination device for when I really don’t feel like doing the minimal homework I have to do here.