The Gremlins in the Night

Where to begin? I cannot imagine how painful and ridiculous this story-telling process is going to be, but I have no other choice - I must document the most insane 30-ish hours of my life. This comes before all of my homework and random little errands that I should be doing. If you have 10 minutes to devote to perusing this, you will see just why I spent the day recollecting and reminiscing.

***It is important to note, I started writing this at around 2 or 3pm today. It is now almost midnight and I'm finishing it up. You have no idea how much was taken out of me just to type it up. All I can say that I've done today was I typed this, did a little homework, and saw Beethoven's Ninth performed at the Musikverein with a pretty good Krakow Philarharmonic, an energetic timpanist, but an awful chorus and abysmal soloists. Good thing I've seen Beethoven's Ninth live twice before.***

Ever since I got to Vienna, just about six weeks ago now, I constantly heard talk of going to Oktoberfest. You know what? Even in Mariazell, a small city in the Austrian alps where my study abroad excursion began, people on the trip were already making plans to trek to Munich, Germany for Oktoberfest. The only thing I knew about the event at the time was that one imbibes an abundance of beer while there. I didn't have much desire to witness it firsthand, but the peer pressure got to me. A little less than a week ago, two friends, Drew Schweppe and Adam Sadowski, and I made legitimate plans to buy train tickets to Munich for this past Friday. Why we waited until the week of to buy tickets, I believe there are a few reasons: our hearts were never fully into it and the two friends of mine are not really about planning - they're of the spontaneous kind.

We did purchase tickets as well as a student discount "membership" type card for future train ticket discounts. From the very beginning, someone, perhaps God-like, did not want us to go on this trip. There is an underlying theme that can be  deduced in this mini-chronicle and it began at the time of our ticket purchase. The men and women who work for ÖBB (the Austrian rail system) are not incredibly helpful nor particularly friendly. Regardless, my comrades and I bought three rather expensive tickets to Munich and back. It is important to note, I suppose, that we never made any lodging accommodations. We were looking for a truly crazy experience - guess what we got? Nothing short of that. Our plans were to go to Oktoberfest and eventually wander into someone's padded palace to spend the night in.

Friday evening quickly comes around so I head to the fellows' apartment to make some sandwiches to take with us. The two fellows went all out on their somewhat "traditional" Oktoberfest garb and looked like a mix between Irish lads and some members of the Nazi campaign. I, on the other hand, did not go all out and that was just fine with me as they were stuck in their costumes for the duration of the trip. My friends' "Resident Advisor" (a really cool Austrian man) gave us advice on what to and what not to bring. This advice wound up being some pretty awful guidance.
"Don't bring an umbrella - where will you put it when you're not using it?"
"Don't bring an iPod - the train will be filled with people partying."
"They won't let you bring anything in the tents - don't even try bringing food." -  Thank God we didn't listen to him on this one.
Interestingly enough, he had never been to an Oktoberfest celebration yet we, for the most part, diligently followed the man's instructions.

The first hitch of the adventure occurred within minutes of leaving for the train station. For some reason Maddes, the RA, directed us very poorly to the Hütteldorf train station. The train was to leave at 12:09 in the AM - thankfully, we left a good hour to get there. We were unsure of exactly where the train was leaving from so we hurried first to Wien Westbanhof where most of the trains coming in and going out of Austria are. Our gut instincts were correct as the train was not leaving from Wien Westbanhof; it was leaving from Hütteldorf. On our way, we had a hysterical interaction with an acid-tripping man on the U-Bahn. The few things we understood him saying were "San Francisco", "I studied music in Vienna", "the government of Moscow", and "I love Bruce Springsteen" as he rushed off the train in a frenzy. If only we got a picture with him. The aftermath will have to do (from left to right, Drew "Little Bear" Schweppe, Adam "Guys, let's make a beat!" Sadowski):

***

(I attempted several times to upload a video of us retelling the above story...Mr. Blogger didn't let it happen. One day you will see it. It might just have to go on Facebook.)

We arrived with plenty of time at the correct station. I had never been on a train for more than 2 hours, let alone a train in the middle of the night to a different country. So one can imagine I was looking forward to it. As soon as we stepped on the train, I was hit with some bad vibes. All of the compartments were pretty much filled with sleeping people. After a bit of searching, the three of us found a compartment with a few seats open. The few seats that were not available were being used by two unpleasant-looking Hungarian men. What else were we going to do? Sleep in the aisle of the train? Well, heh, not until we were coming back to Vienna would some of us do that but hey that's a bit later on. Upon entering this little room, a stench of the worst kind of drunkenness hit us. After finding out that the men did not speak English, we didn't feel bad about belittling the creepy creatures sitting next to us as they consumed beer after beer. I especially loved it when they would finish a beer - they'd crush the can as slowly as they possibly could which made for an AWESOME sleeping aid for us Americans. I was convinced that at least one of them was going to vomit on either each other or us.
If I fast forward about six hours through what was obviously a terrible train ride accompanied by a few hours of in-and-out sleep (that is, the best kind of sleep), we made it to Munich.

What a gorgeous place! HAH. Well, it was 6:15 in the morning in the train station and it was pouring rain - I went expecting rain and I got it. Besides our sleep-derived bodies and minds, eh...besides nothing, we started our Oktoberfest day about as miserable as one could have. The train station at this time was my idea of a frat party in Germany. It was uh, you know - fun. We followed some people in the rain, hoping they'd lead us to OKTOBERFEST. They actually did. Now that I think about it, those were some of the only nice people we encountered on the journey. This is what it looked like...just picture the sun being hundreds of millions of miles away and freezing rain coming down on all those little people.

When we couldn't take anymore trudging in the cold we decided on our "tent for the day." It was the Löwenbräu tent as they primarily sold Löwenbräu beer. Tasty, but nothing I'd ever email home about. They say when at Oktoberfest you spend the entire day drinking in one tent. Do not leave that tent because you'll never get into another one. The tent we chose had a manageable line forming outside. The only slight problem was that tents do not open until 9 AM. It was about 7:20 at this point. Too bad someone told us not to take an umbrella because, well, we were waiting on that line which quickly turned into a packed crowd of obnoxious, beer-thirsty 20 something year-olds. After a few  tiffs with some German hoodlums, lots of accumulated rain falling on us from surrounding umbrellas, a few pokes from those very same umbrellas, and an hour and a half of pure gloom, the Oktoberfest doors opened. I'm not sure how many of you have ever flown before, but let me tell you - it's not as much fun as you may imagine it being. Maybe I shouldn't refer to it as flying, but I was definitely off the ground for a few minutes as the group of hundreds and hundreds pushed their way into the tent. There was nothing anyone could do. I glided to the left, to the right...whichever direction those people forced upon me. I was unable to move any part of my body except for maybe my head. This was until the group really worked together and got me inside. Unfortunately, they kind of made me barrel into a few Oktoberfest French men security dudes - they were wearing berets. I don't think they were actually French. And I don't think they liked it went I almost knocked them over because they barked some German at me.
Oh well...we did make it inside - we just lost Schweppe. Not for long, though.

Funny, you'd think my Oktoberfest tale would concentrate on the drinking and all the fun I had - Nein, no, es tut mir leid, sorry. Those next three or four hours of drinking liters of beer and eating some pretty gross peanut butter/nutella and turkey sandwiches was fun and all, but not all that story-worthy. 

Pardon me, I didn't flip the photo. That is Oktoberfest for you, any way you look at it.

During that whole tent experience, we made some Munich friends, some American friends, some Australian friends, some suburban German enemies who loved blowing smoke in our faces, some Italian enemies, and we even found some fellow IES buddies. Eventually, we ignored the "Stay in one tent" tip and got the hell out of that place. It was somewhere around 1, maybe 2pm at this point. We did some drunk and aimless meandering around the broken glass-ridden grounds. Oooh, we even got into some bumper cars and made a few more enemies. Apparently, Schweppe does not recall this at all:

Two boys havin' fun. It wouldn't last for much longer.

We attempted to find some other IES folks around, but gave up. There's only so much wandering through a huge festival that I can take when I haven't had much sleep and have consumed three or four liters of hefty beer too early in the morning, so we left the Oktoberfest area in search of a bathroom. While Schweppe found a bathroom (contact Schweppe himself if you'd like to hear his bathroom adventure), Adam and I sat on the street and pretended to be homeless. All that led to was us getting asked for money...I guess that's Germany for you. Germans expect the homeless to provide the rich with fancy cars and suits.

We slowly ventured to a McDonald's where we meet an American soldier from Miami who's going to Afghanistan sometime soon. I'd say it was around this point that the alcohol had pretty much worn off. It was also at this time that I attempted to call an IES friend who had offered me to stay with her in Munich that night. To no avail, that was. The three of us didn't really feel like spending the rest of the day and night walking around a city that had not been all that nice to us so we made an executive decision to go home to Vienna. I checked the train schedule and found a 6:48pm train - funny, because I think it was like 6:20. The train after that was something like 11:45pm. We weren't enthralled with the idea of hanging out in Munich for 5 hours so we, as some say "booked it." We made a new British enemy/friend as we walked to the U-bahn. He liked touching our faces a little too much...drunk bastard. I'd say out of all the awful people we met, this kid was the worst. Maybe Schweppe should've stopped asking "Wie geht's?" to every passerby. Schweppe managed to piss off a helpful, attractive woman after getting directions from her. I suppose she became an enemy. Oh, we did make a very nice friend in the next woman we asked directions for. She pointed us in the right direction alright. We illegally rode the Munich U-Bahn one stop to the train station. It was somewhere around 6:45pm so we "booked it OD" and ran to the train bound for our delightful home away from home, Vienna.

We made it just in time ---- ouch, but it was not going to Vienna. The conductor of the train stared at our ticket for way too long and told us to get on the train as it would take us to Salzburg. From there, we'd be able to get to Vienna. While we could have killed 5 hours in that city, we decided against it and got on the packed train. On it, we find some more IES pals which was quite comforting, except that they were going to Salzburg and not to Vienna just yet. We proceed to doze off on the stairs of the train. 

I apologize to my photography savvy friends. I didn't have the energy to stand up and capture the scene in its whole, not-blurry state.

At some point, I got into a conversation with a Munich man who said he was a deacon - I assumed that's something related to a religion I know very little about. He then asked me if I was a Christian...I timidly responded with a "Uh, no....I'm uh...Jewish." I was hoping and praying that this man was not one of the few or many neo-Nazis left in the world. He was a bit taken aback, but handled it like a professional with reassurances such as "Germany, Germany and Austria...we love Israel. We like Jews. Ya know?" He then told me how his father was a member of the SS. I thought about bringing up my recent trip to Auschwitz, but decided against it. I was so wrapped up in our conversation that I forgot to take a picture with the inspiring man. Shucks. Also on the train was a group of fifteen or so drunk, screaming German high schoolers. After an hour or two of some more nodding in and out of sleep, all of the kids got off the train. AHHhhhh - I thought to myself, "Wow, that's possibly the first good thing to happen on the trip." Then, that very same conductor who told us to get on the train got our attention and told us to get off the train. We were all in a daze but we managed to ask "Are we in Salzburg?" Well, no, we were not in Salzburg. He said "Run...bus to Salzburg there." Everyone had gotten off the train and packed into two buses heading to Salzburg, we thought.

As most of you know, I come from New York City - a city with some 8 million people. I know what being cramped in a small space feels like. However, riding the New York City subway did not train me well. That bus ride through the countryside of what I assume now was Germany was just another hellish experience of the trip. Besides the new drunk men, I was now standing up holding onto a pole for dearest life. Schweppe made a few more German enemies - I'm convinced that German people live to laugh at Americans for no real reason. Sitting down next to me was a portly woman with numerous facial and mouthy piercings. She got some kind of tremendous pleasure out of making lots of sexual tongue and hand references/gestures to me while pointing at some guy sitting next to her. That was my form of entertainment on that God-knows-how-long bus ride. It felt like several hours but I think it was only 30 or 40 minutes. We made it to a train station that we all assumed was Salzburg. But just to be sure, we asked a man directing us to the station. "This is Salzburg, right?" I think he said something like, "Nein, das ist Germany." So uh, we weren't in Salzburg. We were to take a train to Salzburg. I don't really remember waiting for that train, but I remember being on it for maybe 15 minutes. I do remember how the entire bus crowd ran across the train tracks to get to the train. I thought that might be a little dangerous, but what else could possibly go wrong...egh. On that train, I got to use the bathroom which was way too spacious to be a bathroom on a train. But hey...we did make it to Salzburg.

At this point, we split left the IES friends who were going to a hostel somewhere in Salzburg for the night. Perhaps we should've done the same. But how were we to know of the atrocities to follow?

We found the track that our "Wien-Westbanhof" train was to embark from. Schweppe went in search of water leaving Adam and I to laugh off the day's events.

King of the Salzburg Train Station while he still felt King-like.

We found the track that our "Wien-Westbanhof" train was to embark from. Schweppe went in search of water (contact Schweppe for his Burger King water-finding fiasco) leaving Adam and I to laugh off the day's events. I remember thinking, "Perhaps we should ask someone if this is definitely going to Vienna." Eh...there was no one there to ask. At 9:40ish, the train arrived. We got on it and searched for a compartment to pass out in. Before we could, a train worker whistled at us and shined a flashlight at us. In the meanest way possible, he communicated to us that we were to go to the other end of the train. Whistling and shining that flashlight. That'll do it. We soon found a heavenly section of empty rooms. Schweppe and Adam lie down on three seats each as I take my own little compartment thinking, "My god...it is almost over." I remember sending a text message to my friend still in Munich, Siena, saying that the awful expedition was so close to the end - as in, I was not convinced that it was going to be over soon. A minute or two later, I hear Schweppe and Adam talking to someone so I go out into the aisle to inquire. It was a train conductor telling us that the train was not going to Vienna. Hmmm. He told us to get off the train at the next stop and to get a train going back to Salzburg where we'd get a Vienna-bound train. Was he serious? Yes...I truly could not believe it...but at the same time, it made sense. Why would our journey end on a somewhat happy note? Exactly, it wouldn't. Curses were flying through the air as we threw on our shoes and got off that damn train. We ran through a tunnel to the other side of the absolutely dead train platform. There was one man there -- he didn't seem to like us very much. That train came maybe 10 minutes later. On the train, I glanced at a map. It looked like an unsolvable puzzle. I chuckled. This is when I began seriously considering the idea that someone had been playing a truly evil joke on us.
 
Once back in Salzburg, we checked another schedule. It seems like we made a mistake. The train that we got on had come to Salzburg FROM Vienna. Alright...whoops, we were perhaps a little too excited to see the name "Wien" and got on the wrong train. Still, even if we didn't get on the train, we would have been waiting for the train to Vienna until 2:17am. So, we had 3 and half hours. 3 and half hours to kill in Salzburg in the rain at 11pm. Welly, welly, welly what to do? We first waited to make sure that the Vienna-bound train was actually going to arrive at 2:17.

"Help us, Tobi."

While waiting on the train station steps, we came across a few very interesting characters. Two men dressed like Spanish bullfighters strolled on up to us. Even now, I'm not really sure why they came up to us. We had a short conversation with the fellows, told them our story and such. Apparently they had just come from Malaga in Spain. What they were doing in Salzburg dressed like idiots, I do not know. We talked to an older gentleman about our woes as well. It didn't seem like he was all there - at one point he said something like, "Oh yah. There is a train to Vienna soon but...eh" and walked away. We then realized we could contact the IES girls that we met on the first train we took that night because they were staying in a hostel in Salzburg. Perhaps we could either stay there the night or just kill some time with them. Too bad we didn't know any of them well enough to have their phone numbers. So we were forced to call one of the IES staff members to get the phone number of one of the girls. Despite the complicated directions to the hostel, we decided to attempt to make it there...anything is better than being stuck in the rain in a foreign, unknown city in the middle of the night. We walked on over to the bus stop and checked the schedule. Ah, no buses to this specific area of Salzburg past 11pm. That's a shame. I'd say this point was when we pretty much knew we were not going to have any more fun. Also, the lack of sleep was definitely creeping up on us.

Next to the train station was a big big hotel. We considered wasting a bit more money on a room for the night. Really, we just wanted to be in some kind of a building. We walk in to simply ask if there were any rooms available. At the front desk, a man seemed to have cut us in line, but Adam was quick to go "Uh, we were here first." The poor man that Adam scolded worked at the hotel...Adam wasn't a happy camper, especially when they told us there were no rooms available.
 
We then slowly walked to the Burger King of Salzburg. They say they have the best burgers in all of Central Europe so we had to try!!! No, that ain't true. We just wanted to sit indoors. Schweppe and I then rather stupidly ate lots of Burger King as some locals (or non locals, I didn't care anymore) serenaded us in major 7ths and minor 2nds. We reflected some more on our fun-filled day and then got kicked out at 12 as Burger King employees have lives too.

As we left, we saw another hotel. This time, it was a Ramada. How could the Ramada not have any rooms available? I don't know, but they didn't have any rooms available. They wouldn't even open the door for us - they told us through a speaker. Where to go? Hey...how about that McDonald's? It's open until 2 in the morning. Just what we need!

That McDonald's was our second McDonalds in 5 or so hours. The previous McDonald's that we got to enjoy was in Germany. But it was this McDonald's in northwestern Austria where our day just fell apart. Nothing terrible happened there, just the awful happenings of the day finally hit us reallll hard. Our little bear Adam took a nap on the table while Drew and I did some more nodding in and out of consciousness. I watched a music video a friend named Mari once showed me. It reminded me that there are nice places in the world...like Bard College, Vienna, New York City. I didn't want to tell Drew at the time and I didn't think it'd do anyone too much good, but I was pretty certain that I was going to vomit in or around that McDonald's - just from exhaustion. Every Austrian who passed us or sat down next to us looked at us first with disgust, then with a huge smile on their face. Three guys, two of which looked pretty ridiculous, half-dead in a Salzburg McDonald's. One lady, referring to Adam, asked me, "Is he dead?"
No...he wasn't but he wasn't far from it.

After an hour or so of that hellhole called a fast food-place, we needed to get out even if into the cold and wet night. We returned to the train station but to the correct platform and around 1:40 the train to Vienna pulled in. There were about 5 empty seats on the train. I took one of them even though it required me to disrupt 5 sleeping strangers. Schweppe and Adam were men about it. They slept on the floor of the train aisle. For some reason, the train sat in the station of Salzburg until 2:20. I recall staring (into space) out the window thinking we were finally moving. We weren't. Either I was hallucinating or it really did look like we were moving. I looked to my left towards a smiling man and asked with the last few coherent words I had left, "This IS going to Vienna, right?" He nodded and replied, "Yeah...I'm not really sure...it should be." That was plenty good enough for me. Three hours of more of the same went by slowly as ever. The last half hour I spent fully awake waiting to see a "Hütteldorf Wien" sign. Every time we passed a station, I'd get dizzy just trying to read the sign. I have seen hell, folks...it isn't pleasant. When we came to a halt at the Hütteldorf Wien station, I quickly started patting Schweppe and Adam, waking them from their slumbers. It was time to go find our way home in a city we knew. It was time. We had been in that station just 28 or 29 hours earlier. I remember maybe 10 hours before that point thinking, "How crazy. We might be able to say that we left Vienna and arrived in Vienna in the same day." It was close, but we were some 6 hours late.

While waiting for the U4 train to take us home, we met one last character. The problem was we didn't want to meet anymore people. The other problem was that this guy was extremely annoying. He was some NYU Law graduate working at the UN in Vienna who was also at Oktoberfest that day and he sucked. He wouldn't stop talking. It was quite clear we didn't want to talk to him. He just kept on yapppin'. All I remember about that 30-minute conversation was that he lived in Williamsburg for 4 years and he compared Williamsburg to Manhattan. That's when I stopped listening altogether.

Around 6:20am, I walked into my room and plopped into bed.

A few final things:
- I recall when we were rushing to the train to Munich, Adam kept on reminding us, "Hey, this is good. It's an adventure, right?" If only he knew what we were about to experience.
- Also, one of the funniest parts of the whole 30 hours was the mood shift from Drew to Adam. There were times when Drew was not feeling it at all whereas little Adam would be as cheerful as a summer bird. "Cheer up little bear. We're going to be just fine." Then maybe an hour later, they'd switch moods.
- I believe I may remember a few more bits of the above events in the coming days. If I'm feeling extra happy, I'll add them to this long and drawn out tale.
- Notice the number of pictures taken decreases as the experience got more and more painful. What's that? A direct inverse proportion or somethin?
- I assume there are numerous typos in here...there is no way I can reread what I just typed. I apologize.
- I just read somewhere that we attended the 200th anniversary of Oktoberfest. I guess that means Oktoberfest is normally a lot worse.