I rub a Mexican monkey.

To start: I have gotten 17 hours of sleep in the last four days. But it's been super awesome, and the Swedes left this afternoon, so obviously none of us were allowed to sleep. With that said, I move on to my next bit. I'm going to say it. Oktoberfest is wicked overrated. Don't get me wrong it was super fun and crazy and wonderful. However, it was also wicked expensive. And I have just been to an infinitely superior Bierfest. :) Yesterday, a group of us went to the Stuttgart Bierfest, called Cannstatter Volksfest, and it was awesome. 

Deutschland is a land of happiness.

My day began with a really early walk back to Prinz Karl. The previous night, almost all of Deutsch Kompakt went up to Fichtenweg for a dinner, prepared by the Asian kids in our class. My God was it awesome. They made everything you could have asked for it, and it tasted so, so good. Afterwards, a bunch of us went to Harvey's room, had apple crisp and ice cream, and watched Mean Girls, as it was October 3rd. Then we all went to Kuckuck, wherein we danced and hung out and I managed to break one of Dani's pens trying to open a bottle of wine... :P Hannah, David, Lisa, and I went back into town around 3 or so, and stopped at Kalender for some Döner, after scaring a ton of pigeons. All of this nonsense left me getting home at roughly 4:30AM, and David, Hannah, Lisa, and I had made plans to meet at Prinz Karl at 8:30 for breakfast and an early morning grocery run for pasta and wine for pasta night later that evening. I planned on making Nana's spaghetti recipe, and finding all the ingredients in the grocery store was particularly challenging. For one, Velveeta cheese doesn't exist in Europe (for good reason). I had forgotten the conversion of lb to kg, so I guess at what a half pound of ground beef was, and I couldn't reason find beef bouillion. So moral of the story, cooking in Europe is a little challenging.

Around 10:30, 7 of us (Hannah, David, Lisa, Lasse, Louise, Luiza, and myself) met at the Hauptbahnhof to catch a train to Stuttgart. We caught one in very short order and proceeded to sit in the same car as a bunch of drunk, lederhosened and dirndled 14 year-olds, which was rather obnoxious. I sat next to David, and he threatened to throw wasabi peanuts at them. He didn't, and we sat and listened to Swedish music and things. It was wonderful. We got to Cannstatt, on the southside of Stuttgart around 11:30 and walked the grounds briefly before deciding to go into a Fürstenberg tent. And guess what. It was completely and totally empty. At Oktoberfest, if we got there at that time on a Friday, there wouldn't be a goddamned seat in the house. But this tent was empty. It was awesome. The 7 of us grabbed a booth and ordered a Volksfest Maß (which is what the mugs are called) and some schwäbisches Essen (more spätzle!). We sat there, drank our litres, and took a ton of pictures. Then Graham, Harvey, Harry, Kyle, and Emelie showed up, and we drank even more beer and took more pictures. (Harvey jacked my camera and went a little crazy with it.) For many of them, you kids can check out Facebook. In any case, we listened to music played by a live band, some German, some not. There was quite the rendition of Country Roads, and it was really fun when they played So ein schöner Tag. Yeah, so we drank and danced and it was lovely. 

Eventually we left the tent to change some scenery. We took up residence in another tent. There, there was more live music, and for us, this meant more bench dancing, which was jolly good fun. There we ordered another maß, finished it, and then went outside to the rides. A bunch of us rode a pendulum type ride and then a big spinning swing ride. By that time, it was just about time for us to catch the train back so that Hannah and I could start on pasta night. We caught a train around 5:30, and it was a super low-key ride back. 

Hannah and I attempted to start making pasta at 6:30, but we didn't really get going until 7 or so. I attempted to recreate Nana's spaghetti sauce recipe. Given the limited time, the fact that I had 3 litres of beer and some wine, and that I didn't have all of the ingredients, I think it turned out pretty well. While we did have some troubles boiling water, we managed to eventually feed everyone and had more wine than anyone needed. We stayed in Prinz Karl until the wee hours of the morning, when David and I left so that Hannah could get some sleep. Since it was his last night, we went with Lisa, the Spaniards, and Julius to die Kirchentreppen. We sat there chilling and drinking wine until something around 4 in the morning. 

:(

Which meant that I got 4 hours of sleep, because I went back to Hannah's at 9AM to meet up with her, David and Lisa for his last morning in Deutschland. We didn't end up meeting the Swedes until around 11, when we went to a pizza joint on the Neckar. We hung out until 1:15 when there bus came. And now there is a Sweden-shaped hole in my heart. I am so sad that they are gone. But I am so very excited to visit them in Uppsala. 

So yeah, that's about it on my end for things that are going on. Here are some of the (more than 500 pictures) from yesterday.