Oktoberfest slash the best weekend of my LIFE!

The train ride to Germany was so much fun! It was my first over-night train, and I was with so many friends all together! The sleeper carts are very small, but we all managed to squeeze in just fine!! Of course the guys brought beer on the train and Harper and I brought a bottle of wine! We had a great time talking and anticipating what was to come!

First off, Germany itself was unbelievable! It was our first trip out of Italy and breathing in the crisp German air was so nice compared to all of the congestion from Italy. We stayed in the Holiday Inn, Pablo, Harper, Blair, Kelsey, Carla, Joe, and me. We got in to Munich at 6:00AM, couldn’t check in to our hotel, so we went straight to Oktoberfest. It was cool to see the grounds empty, we were even able to take a few pictures of the beer tents before they opened. Finally, we found the tent all of our other friends from the program were in, and sat and waited for our first stein. At 10:00, the very large German woman carried over eight huge steins and we began our first day of drinking! By 1:00, we were all on our second or third steins and things were messy. I must say it was a wonderful time drinking, but the best part was how we were immersed in the culture, meeting all of these German people and talking to them all about their past Oktoberfest years. We met others from the US of course, but also from Holland, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Austria, and England. Clearly Oktoberfest has become quite the international party! The tents were all very cool to see. They looked like buildings, it was hard to believe that they put all of this up and then take it down in three weeks! The tent we were in the first day was called Hofbrau, it is supposed to the youngest crowd and also the most international tent at Oktoberfest. By 4:00 the first day we were ALL back at the hotel passed out in the beds. We all woke up around 9 and walked around for the rest of the night. The second day, we definitely paced ourselves much better than the first day. Again, we met a lot of new fun people and stayed mostly in the Paulaner tent, which had really good beer! I even liked it! The two girls I am in the most pictures with, is Harper (my roommate) and Kelsey (a friend of Harper’s from home). Kels is on a different program and I hang out with her a lot, usually even more than Harper does, its funny! Anyways they are probably the two girls I am closest with out here, we will definitely always keep in touch!
SO, Oktoberfest was also a blast because it was my 21st birthday, and what a birthday weekend it was!! I had soo much fun! Hopefully you all enjoy my pictures as much as I do, the Germans outfits were so funny, I took as many pictures as I could of them! I also had to take a few pictures of probably the BEST part of Germany, the BRATS!!!! Oh man, I am confessing on here, because I ate two a day while I was there! I felt like a real German, stein in one hand and a fat brat with sauerkraut in the other! It was one of the best times of my life!

Milano e Lago di Como

Our next weekend we went on a field trip to see the Last Supper in Milan! So crazy! You have to walk through three rooms that aerate you so no dust gets into the room. The Last Supper was spectacular as I’m sure you could imagine, it's so amazing to think about how old it is! After that we walked around Milan for a while and saw the most gorgeous Duomo I have seen in Europe this far! It is like an ice palace! There is so much detail it is just amazing! We spent our first night in Milan in the crappiest hostel EVER, it was like a night in jail, and then we traveled on to Lake Como! This is where we stayed in the four star hotel instead and I got to take my first bath since being at home! I was so happy! We rented mopeds and cruised all around Lake Como, the sights were breath-taking and I had my own personal driver the whole time, so I was able to do a lot of sight-seeing!! This was definitely one of my favorites places in Italy. We never found George Clooney’s house, but we did find the huge mansion that is in the movie Casino Royale, and of course a ton of ridiculously expensive Italian cars!

Tuscan Wine Harvest

The first weekend in Florence we went to a wine harvest up in the mountains of Tuscany. We were able to see how the grapes are harvested and fermented into wine! It was very interesting! The machine that you see in the first pictures removes the grapes from the vine. So in go the grapes and out pop all of the vines and stems, then the grapes filter down a large tube into the cellar. The grapes sit in the huge metal tubs and then are put into the barrels.
After our lesson, we had a little brunch and tasted all of the wines that are harvested there. It was also very cool to walk around the vineyard and see all of the grapes because they look so different. The grapes are 100% natural. They dont put any pesticides or anything on the grapes, they say the essential ingredients are: Italian soil and the Tuscan sun.