The Wasen, Take Two

AHHH!!

Sunday I was going to go to the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart, Stuttgart is the home of both Mercedes and Porsche. Unfortunately by the time I got myself motivated the museum wasn’t going to be open much longer and I decided I could visit on Monday. Instead I headed into the hills above Esslingen and walked on the paths that go through the wine fields. There were also apple, pear and plum trees scattered about. It was a beautiful day and a nice relaxing way to get some exercise.

Monday I went to the Mercedes museum but unfortunately it is closed on Monday’s. The museum is on the same grounds as the Stuttgart futbol(soccer) stadium and Mercedes employee offices. The number of bikes in the employee parking was staggering as were the number of motorbikes. Bikes get to park in the front, followed by motorbikes and finally cars. I think it’s a great idea to have employees bike to work if it’s feasible. I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the park in downtown Stuttgart relaxing.

The company where Yvonne worked this summer was having an employee only get together at the Wasen, where the owner was buying employees drinks and food. As I wasn’t an employee I was unable to partake in the free goodness but I was able to go back to the Wasen and enjoy myself none the less. Yvonne went with her company to their table and I walked around and found a spot for myself closer to the music. I joined a table of guys from Wales, England and Ireland. These guys had been at the Wasen for five nights straight and were heading back home the next day. The Wasen has several tents and this time I was at a different tent than the one we were at on Saturday night. The new tent had stripper poles and cameras that were projecting onto a big screen. We nicknamed the photo setup the “perv cam” because they only seemed to show provocatively dressed girls dancing on their benches, not that I minded.

There were girls walking around with a breathalyzer machine charging people 3€ to be breathalyzed and one of the guys at my table wanted to give it a try. The guy asked the breathalyzer girl, how high the machine went and was told a 3.0. The guy then blew and had a blood alcohol content of 3.53.

Like on Saturday everyone was standing and singing on the benches. Shortly after we had a new round of beers delivered a German guy at another table slipped and fell onto our table knocking three of our fresh beers onto the ground and shattering the beer mugs. At first the guy was only willing to offer us one beer to replace our three that were destroyed but after a short conversation and realizing there were 12 of us and only 3 of them they replaced the rest of the beer they spilt.

After the Wasen we got on the train to go back home and it was full of other people who had also been at the Wasen. We sang Oktoberfest songs all the way home, another amazing ridiculous night.

I spent much of Tuesday making plans and have the next few weeks planned out as follows Munich - Berlin - Amsterdam - Belgium - Prague – Krakow and then working my way south through eastern Europe.

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