Oktoberfestivus

A quick note to the readers: 

I am constantly receiving boat loads of feedback from my loyal fans (by loyal fans, I, of course, mean myself). Most of it is very positive, but there is occasionally a snarky remark and sometimes even a suggestion on how my blog could better improve someone's life. I take this responsibility very seriously. One piece of feedback I have received lately is that there is too much time between my posts and then the posts are actually too long and dense and filled with so much useful information that it's hard for any one person to digest in even several sittings. Well my loyal readers, I am listening and I am going to try to post smaller portions of my trip, but more often. 

And here is the first of said smaller posts...

Almost 4 months ago, I went to Oktoberfest. It was in September (because there is no month named Oktober...the spell check doesn't recognize it).

I'm wearing the blue shirt 25th row from the front, 6th from the left side

Something like 600,000 (pronounced 600,000 when you say it in German) people per day go through Oktoberfest. This means that lodging is really, really expensive and sells out way in advance. With the lack of foresight and planning that we put in, we were forced to stay in tents....tents in a park....tents in a park setup by a bunch of Belgian guys in their mid twenties looking to make some money from high prices and do a little partying themselves. Webster's dictionary defines this situation as: "shit show".

Our five-star hotel in Munich

These lovely accommodations actually ended up feeling appropriate, though, given the scene and atmosphere of the festival. It was just complete, no holding back drunkenness.

Warning: Graphic image above (or was I suppose to warn you before the picture?)

Hi Brecht and beers

Good night Abe!

The Oktoberfest grounds is 100 acres of carnival rides, food stalls and of course giant beer tents. There's about 15 of these beer tents on the grounds that are actually more like warehouse size open areas with picnic table style seating and up to 10,000 person capacities.

Hard to get a feel of the scale...but its big

There's a brass band at the center of each of these tents and they play such German hits as Sweet Caroline and The Time of my Life. Yes, you're basically at a giant super drunk wedding without having to remain in control because nobody's grandparents are watching. Every 10 minutes or so, the band plays this song (which everyone sings along to) "Ein Prosit, ein Prosit", and then a bunch of other words in German that I don't understand. I'm told it is to pay homage to the late great German Chancellor......


Helmut Schmidt.

I may have had a pint or two

Remote Year bonding time

In between songs the general action in the tents is when someone stands up on the top of their table, pumps up the crowd and then chugs a full liter of beer. Everyone cheers and pounds on the table in support. This process moves around the room as different people stand up on their table for their ten seconds of glory. I saw one guy chug three liters in a row; OMG (I think he's dead now). And to answer your next question, no this activity is not sexist. I saw several women stand up and chug a whole liter, as well. I, of course, did not partake because I have a bad back (or something). But I can definitely chug a liter of beer....I swear.

Chug! Chug! Chug!

Daaaaammmmn Girl!

Now let's discuss the lederhosen. It's translates to "leather trousers" (or "leather pants" if you pronounce it in American). Most everyone was wearing the outfit, but I'm pretty sure that I wore it best.

Ich bein Deutsche

And the female equivalent outfit is called the dirndl, which of course translate to "show off your boobs".

Lovely dresses ladies

In closing, I'd just like to summarize by saying Oktoberfest was a great time, I'm glad I went and I would recommend it. However, I will not be going back any time soon (ever). I am now 25 years old and so too old for this.

Next month (which was actually almost three months ago now as I'm writing this), we head to Croatia and on a trip to Spain with Mr. Levin (my father...you can call him Sid).

Total countries visited on my trip: 14 (Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, England, Belgium, Italy, Czech Republic, Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Germany).

Did Serbia make the BelGrade?

What's a Serbia? 

Going into month 7 of my Remote Year journey, I knew basically nothing about the place to which I was headed. Of course, this was probably even more true when I had gone to Bolivia, so I wasn't too concerned (and because I'm a badass). This whole year I've basically done zero research on upcoming places and I just show up and figure things out (so badass). It's definitely nice to not have to do any work planning things out and I guess that's why I'm paying Remote Year (or I'm just a badass). 

My first impression of Belgrade was that everyone smokes. EVERYONE (old and young alike). And everywhere. I've never seen a society as smoke friendly as Serbia. The place is basically one giant cigarette. At customs they checked my passport and forced me to smoke a cigarette before I could enter the country.

My second impression of Belgrade was....two thumbs up (except for the smoking). It had a nice mix of both old and new. For example, it had a fortress....that held a music festival.

The famous music festival fortress of Belgrade

We must protect this house...with a wall

The third impression I had of Belgrade was that it's obsessed with Nikola Tesla. You know, that guy who invented that car....I think. He also invented a bunch of important products dealing with electricity in the early 1900s including harnessing alternating currents which I don't understand at all, so I'm just going to stop pretending like I know what I'm talking about. In any event, Tesla's parents (also Teslas) were Serbian, so he's like a big deal in Serbia and they even named their airport after him. They also have the Tesla museum in Belgrade which is full of magic tricks....or it might be science.

Some sort of magic....or possibly science

Of course the big draw at the museum is Tesla himself. He's there.

Seriously.

Tesla himself....in ash form...in an urn.

Was that too morbid?

Serbia had another important historical figure alive around the same time as Tesla whom I'm sure you know very well. That's right, none other than Gavrilo Princip. He's one of your favorites, isn't he?

Mural of Gavrilo Princip in Belgrade

Gavrilo is the guy who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 sparking the first world war #historyIsReal.

You may also remember Serbia from events back in the late 1990s. You actually probably don't remember since that was like 20 years ago....and also because the country was called Yugoslavia back then. But the point is that NATO bombed buildings in Belgrade and other targets in the area as a way to stop Slobodan Milosovich from occupying Kosovo. First, don't you just love the name Slobodan? Second, just so we're clear, Slobodan was trying to hold onto Kosovo despite the large Albanian population who wanted independence. This whole situation is not to be confused with the NATO involvement in the Bosnian War where NATO stepped in to defend Herzegovina (I know you wouldn't confuse those). And don't get me started on the Croatian Independence war where "A self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina, created as a nation state for ethnic Serbs living on Croatian territory, which was occupied by the remnants of the Yugoslav People's Army (from Serbia and Montenegro)."

I'm not trying to make light of the subject, but its clearly very complex and I wouldn't do it justice trying to explain it. At the end of the day, though, in the mid 90's, Yugoslavia was broken up into seven countries; Bosnia and Herzegovina (thats one), Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia. And there's still definitely tension in the area, especially among the older population, and this tension was very visible at times with Croatian-Serbian relations (they like to say mean things about each other...sometimes jokingly...sometimes not). Since the NATO bombins happened in the 90s, pretty much everyone with whom we interacted actually lived through this. Memories range from being a child sent to live with foreign relatives for safety, to having school cancelled for three months, grabbing beers and watching bombs fall on the city from a nearby hill.

Memorial to NATO bombings in Belgrade

And just one other name you should know from Yugoslavia history is Tito. He was the president of Yugoslavia, but really embodied the whole concept of the country. His death in 1980 was what started the whole unraveling of the different states. 

Tito's Tomb - very exciting picture

That's it! No more history, I promise!

Moving on, as you probably know (because I talk it about it all the time...like all the time!), one of my life goals was to bike through the Serbian country side. And guess what? It finally happened! 

I joined a biker gang

A bunch of us rented bikes and rode across (part of) Serbia. We ended up at some river where we spent the night sleeping on boat houses.

This is a boat house

This is me standing on my boat house

One of my other dreams, which you all knew too well, was to go to Romania. And wouldn't you know it, I got to check this one off the list as well.

One arm in Romania

That's right, I had a whole arm in Romania. I actually rode a bike for miles (they call them kilometers in Serbia) through the mud from a co-working facility out in the country side and illegally snuck my arm across the border (I am now an international criminal). I'd still like to go back to Romania some day to put my whole body in the country (and see slightly more of it), but for now...mission accomplished.

Stuck in the mud on the way to Romania

After retiring from the life of international crime, I went back to Belgrade for a football match (what you probably call soccer, or what you probably call Calcio if you are from Italy (just found that on Google)). This was no ordinary Calcio match. This was a derby match! THE derby match! (a derby is a match between two teams from the same city). This rivalry regularly results in rioting before the match even starts. We were given instructions such as "wear closed toes shoes so its easier to run" and "if anything happens stay low and follow me out". And although it ended up being a relatively calm match, it still looked pretty cool.

Burn it down

Yes, this is a calm match

That night, the whole city was lined with riot police, but they weren't just there for the derby riots. They were also there because some people in Serbia aren't, lets say, as culturally accepting as one would like. Basically, the Serbs know how to throw a good protest against gay pride and the next day happened to be the pride parade in Belgrade. Since 2010, Belgrade has hosted a pride parade with some sort of violence taking palace each year. In 2010, "Anti-gay rioters fought with about 5,000 armed police, throwing Molotov cocktails, bricks, stones, glass bottles and firecrackers; the police used tear gas and rubber bullets." Although things had been getting less extreme each year, the whole downtown area was completely barricaded and the area was basically void of people except for riot police.

Policija

I happened to walk by the main pride rally area as they were cleaning up and there was a group of priests of various religions sprinkling holy water and such on the area to "cleanse" it. Oh religion, you're so silly.

One nice thing that happened for me in Belgrade was that I joined a running club. I made friends with a number of locals through the club and they might be reading this blog post about themselves right now. There was even a 10k race in the city when I first arrived and I met running groups visiting from Macedonia, Montenegro, Libya and even Israel. It was quite the multi-cultural experience 

That guy in the white shirt is from Montenegro

I win! No...I barely finished

Belgrade also inspired my with another business idea (all my ideas are just bringing things from other countries to America). River boat clubs. As in clubs on river boats. As in a boat on a river with a club. As in a river with a club on a boat. As in a club on...shut up Matt! In Belgrade these clubs are called Splavs and they line the river with flashing lights and loud bass all night long. Why hasn't anyone put a boat club on the river in Manhattan? WHY?

Matt's river boat club...coming soon to an America near you

And here's a couple other random pictures of Belgrade that don't really fit into any of my stories.,,

Umbrellas

Parliament

One final thing I did in Belgrade was to volunteer with a refugee aid organization. Serbia has a large number of refugees, mostly just passing through, who are in need of food, water and clothes during their time in the country. I was able to talk with a number of them while they waited in line for food. Most of them were 18 to 25 year old men with similar stories of coming from Afghanistan or Pakistan and passing through Serbia trying to reach the rest of their families in other parts of Europe. Some of them had stories of walking for five days to cross borders. It really does seem unimaginable to be 20 years old and leave your home and even your country to go to some unknown place by yourself. Although its terrible, I'm glad I was able to experience a tiny bit of this situation.

See, Matt isn't completely a bad guy.

I'm not sure if it came through in this post, but I really liked Belgrade and it was definitely one of my favorite months of this trip.

And now I will leave you with a traditional Serbian dance:

Total countries visited on my trip: 13 (Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, England, Belgium, Italy, Czech Republic, Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Hungary, Serbia).

Say it with me - DubLisBudaVien

Even though Prague was pretty awesome (as I'm sure you read in my last post), I ended up spending exactly 0 weekends during my month in the city. It's not my fault, I swear. There's just too much to see.

The first weekend I went to Dublin and ran my first half marathon (gasp). In preparation for the race, we hydrated hard....like really hard......like "out all night at the bars in Dublin" hard. We found this "traditional" little Irish pub where some guy was playing Irish songs (and some American songs) and the whole crowd was toasting and singing drunkenly (they must have been hydrating for the marathon as well).  It was so Ireland.

So Ireland!

We also made a stop in the Guinness factory, which was actually pretty great. A lot of beer factory tours suck, but this one I give two (Irish) thumbs up. And the big news coming out the Guinness factory? I'm now a certified Guinness pourer (pouree? bar tender? alcoholic?). Let me know if you need one poured (and you're standing next to me) (and we're at a bar with Guinness on tap) (and there's no bar tender so I can go behind the bar) (actually never mind, don't ask me). The factory also had a bar on the top floor with a 360 degree view of the city, but more importantly had a big stage where they played traditional Irish music and even put on an Irish jig show. So Ireland!

River Dance!

Guinnesses (Guinni?) at different stages of settling

Hydrating for the marathon

I had a lot of fun going out in Dublin, but I was there for a bigger reason...to win a half marathon. The farthest I have ever run in my life before this was around 9 miles, so odds were that I wouldn't win...or even finish (plus the signs marking the way were in kilometer, leading me to believe I was done around the halfway point). However, good prevailed over evil, dogs prevailed over cats, Derrick Zoolander prevailed over Mugatu, and I finished the race in a time of 1:56:56. Not too bad considering I am traveling around the world and not exactly concentrating on training.

They said it couldn't be done

A group of us have also signed up for the Chang Mai (Thailand) half marathon in December. Its going to be so hot there that they are starting the race around 4AM. So, really we have two groups going; the runners, and the people coming directly from the bar to cheer us on.

Moving south down the continent, weekend number two was spent in Lisbon (that's in Portugal for you geographically challenged people). Lisbon ended up being the first place this year with consistent warm weather and a beach. They talk about digital nomads always chasing summer around the globe, well, we really emphasized the chasing part. We always seem to be about one month behind the warm weather, so it was nice to bring out the guns for a beach day (by guns I mean my giant arms (and by my giant arms I mean my "slightly above average on a good day" arms)). Good thing there's an open carry law in Lisbon.

Finally a beach!

In addition to the beach, Lisbon had some pretty great food as well. I went to this TimeOut market that was a huge cafeteria like setup with over 50 different Lisbon restaurants offering a limited menu. All kinds of good seafood was consumed.

Mmmmmm Lisbon

That's a straight up whole octopus

But Lisbon's most prized food offering is their egg tart. These things are really delicious. I'm not sure why we don't have them in the US (we steal everything good and unhealthy). Hmmmm, I think I see a business plan forming.

Look for these at Matt's Bakery in the near future (hopefully I have a better name for my bakery by then)

I also had the pleasure of attending a Portuguese football match (thats soccer for you sports challenged people....and Americans). One of the best parts of the game was the setup outside the stadium on the street where hundreds of people partied pre and post game (cause you can drink in the street).

So Portugal!

Drinking in the street

One odd thing I found about Lisbon was that it has some strange obsession with tiles. Everything (streets and buildings) are layered with tiles. There's probably a reason for it, but I'm not in the mood to Google, so I'll just call it weird.

Tiles

Regardless of these tiles, Lisbon was quite an attractive city

That's an arch (and some tiles)

That's another arch (actually might be the same arch)

Looking out the castle wall (no arches in sight)

Guarding Lisbon and its arches

Weekend number three was spent much closer to Prague, in the Austrian city of Vienna. There's a guy in my Remote Year group that we call Jacek (because that's his name) who is from Austria and was gracious enough to show us his home country.

So what does one think of when they hear Austria? For me, its wienerschnitzel and Hitler (in no particular order). And I got a taste of both on my trip.

First up is the wienerschnitzel. I ate it.

So Austria!

Next, we have Hitler. Jacek, being the gracious host that he is, lead us on a walking tour through Austria. He was such a great tour guide and knew everything about all the sites....kind of. He actually just brought a speaker and played a downloaded walking tour guide through his phone, but, I still learned things. One of the places we went was Heldenplatz (oh, of course, Heldenplatz). Hitler gave a famous speech here after the takeover of Austria.

So Hitler!

Actually, here's a video of that speech that Hitler gave on that very balcony.

That guy seems like he's going places.

Even outside of Hitler speech venues, there's lots of neato old school buildings throughout Vienna similar to this one.

Neato

Old School Palace

We also went to an amusement park which has a famous ferris wheel for some reason. My dad went to Vienna like 50 years ago and he even asked me if I saw this ferris wheel on my trip. I'm guessing it must have been more impressive back then (but so was color TV).

A famous, non-impressive ferris wheel.

I also saw the most depressing thing at this amusement park. I'm still crying from it, so I just want to share it with you as well. They had a merry-go-round with live donkeys/horses hooked up and walking around it. The lives of these animals consisted of just walking in tiny circles forever. Where's PETA when you need them?

I am crying inside

And on that sad note, we will leave Vienna and move onto my last weekend of Prague month, which was actually our travel weekend to Belgrade. We were taking a bus in between the cities and made a stop in Budapest. A bunch of us decided we would just stay in Budapest for a few days and meet the group later in Belgrade.

I basically knew nothing about Budapest, other than it had a grand hotel (never heard that one before) and something called Hungarian Goulash. I found at least one of these things.

Legit Hungarian Goulash

But Budapest actually ended up being one of the most beautiful cities I've seen on my whole trip. The Danube river runs through the city (as it had in Prague and Vienna and will in Belgrade) and the surrounding architecture is just awesome. At night everything is especially impressive.

More of my great nighttime photography

Budapest Parliament building. This one is unreal

Square of Heroes (thats why I was there)

Like many eastern European countries, Budapest has a dark past with a reign of terror for many years by the Nazis and some Communists dictators. We visited the museum of terror in the city to see all the fun they had during these times.

Happy times at the museum of terror

The museum wasn't the only thing that was terrifying in the city. They also had a statue of Ronald Regan. Can you get any more terrifying than that?

Really? Ronald Regan? Something about fighting Communism?

Even more terrifying than Regan, though, was this guy lying on a bench that we found passed out during our bike tour. Sorry, I had to take a picture and post it here.

So Budapest!

Fortunately, that wasn't the only skin I saw during my time in the city. Budapest is apparently known for its baths, so I felt obligated to check one out (even though it was 90 degrees outside). These baths really just ended up being some pools. Some hot pools.

The Budapest baths (better known as a pools)

The other thing Budapest is now know for is ruin bars. These are bars that have been established in the ruins of old buildings. They're basically large open air courtyards surrounded by dilapidated buildings. So obviously very fun.

The ruins

And thats how I spent my four weekends in Prague (but not in Prague) in DubLisBudaVien. Together with London the previous month and Belgrade the next month, I visited 7 countries in about 30 days. That's so Remote Year!

Total countries visited on my trip: 12