A Weekend of Sleeping on Train Station Floors (a.k.a. Oktoberfest)

As some of you may know, Oktoberfest was a bit of a disaster for me, so here is a detailed account.

Also, I apologize for the lack of pictures, but I was a bit too stressed to take pictures.

All of us, as IUSP students, had class until 4pm on Friday and at 9am the following Monday, so we really could only go to Munich for the weekend. Skipping our afternoon class on Friday wasn't even an option because we had a reunification role-play that was 30% of our grade. Another issue was, because we had planned it so late, there weren't any hostels, hotels, or couches (from couchsurfing.org) available for anything below maybe €300.

Here is what we decided to do: we would take trains down to Munich overnight, arrive early Saturday morning, spend the day at Oktoberfest, and then take another overnight trip back to Marburg, and just forgo any sleep except what we could get on the trains. This way we wouldn't have to pay for any accommodation and wouldn't miss any class.

We went in a group of eleven and left after class at around 6pm. The trip down went well enough, and we were so excited for Oktoberfest that none of us felt much of the sleep deprivation yet. We were separated into smaller groups because eleven people makes it difficult. I was in a group of four with Lindsey, Brooks, and Julia in the Löwen Bräu beer tent. Everything was going well, until about 1pm when shit hit the fan.

(Attention parents, other family members, teachers, and future employers: I talk about my drinking exploits in the following text; don’t judge me)

The beer severed at Oktoberfest is served in 1 liter mugs and is usually about 10-12% alcohol by volume.  At 1pm I had drank two of these, and suddenly noticed that my bag, which had been at my feet under the table, was missing.

Contents of bag:

• Wallet containing: €50, driver’s license, 3 bank cards, health insurance card, student ID/bus pass
• Passport
• iPod and headphones
• Nintendo DS lite (with Pokémon Black)
• Keys to my dorm
• Prepaid phone
• Water bottle (with the eye stickers on it)
• Blanket (some of you know it as my magic blanket)
• Deck of cards
• Small notebook and pencils
• Chocolate

I was freaking out. I started asking everyone around if they had seen it or if anyone had taken it. I went to find a waitress, who took me to the lost and found, but it wasn't there. They gave me a map and showed me where the Oktoberfest police station was.

I walked over to Lindsey, who had drank about three (maybe more) of the beers, and said, “Lindsey, my bag is missing. I need your help to find it.”

She opened her eyes wide and said, “What? That’s terrible! I’ll look for it.”

I thanked her and walked over to Brooks, who was talking to someone at another table. I said, “Brooks, I need your help. Someone took my bag and it has everything in it.”

He blinked, clearly very drunk, and said, “What? Okay. Where did you have it?”

I told him and walked over to the table again, where I saw Lindsey chatting with someone. I said to her, “Lindsey! I need your help finding my bag!” and she responded, “What?! Your bag is missing?!” I exasperatedly explained the situation again, and then noticed that Brooks was still at the other table.

“Brooks!” I said, “I need your help finding my bag! I think someone took it.”

“What? Someone took your bag?!”

Clearly neither of them was going to be any help. I walked over to Julia and handed her the map. I said, “Julia, my bag is missing. I need to go to the police station.” I pointed to the place the waitress had circled. “This is where I’m going to be. Please round them up and meet me here. I don’t have a phone.”

She said okay and nodded, and was definitely less drunk than Lindsey or Brooks. I walked over to tell Lindsey that I was leaving the tent, but she was throwing up in a bucket.

The trouble with the tents is that once you leave, you have to wait in line again to get back in, and that can take upwards of an hour, so I could understand why they would be hesitant to meet me. I just hoped that I communicated my desperation well enough that they would understand. I pushed through the crowd and left the tent and started walking to the police station.

When I arrived they sent me to the Oktoberfest-wide lost and found, but it wasn't there so I was then able to fill out a police report. That only took about 15 minutes, so after I was done I decided to sit out in front of the police station and wait.

I had never felt more vulnerable in my whole life. There I was, alone at this massive festival in a foreign city with nothing in my pockets but €3 and my camera. I had no way to find anyone in my group, I didn't have enough money to get home on my own, and even if I did, I didn't have keys to get into my dorm. I had no personal identification. I had no phone. I didn't even really have enough money to buy food.

I started to cry a little, and waited at the police station until about 3:30pm. After no one had shown up, I decided to try to get back into the Löwen Bräu tent to see if I could find them. I waited in line for about a half hour, but it didn't budge, and since I wasn't even sure if they were still there, I decided instead to just wait at the train station. I figured, since our itinerary was to leave at 2am, I would be able to meet them there eventually.

As I walked to the train station it started raining and it got pretty cold. When I got there I waited by the entrance and just watched people walking by. It was cold but I didn't want to miss seeing anyone from my group walking in or out. What worried me was that there were thousands of people in that train station, so it still would have been very easy for me to miss them.

Luckily, at around 7pm I saw Jordan and Alice and ran up to them. I explained what had happened and then started crying on Jordan’s shoulder.

She told me that I wasn't the only one who had had a rough time. Lindsey had passed out on the table in the beer tent after throwing up so the staff threw her out, and Julia had left to look for me (but couldn't find the police station for some reason) so they both had gotten lost on their own too. When they had left the tent, Brooks (who didn't have a phone) was still there, but now we had no idea where he was.

We decided to leave on an earlier train because this had been a disaster and we just wanted to get back, and we hoped Brooks would find us by then. If not, he had said on the way that if he wandered off and we couldn't find him, that he would be okay and we should just go home.

10 o'clock rolled around, and there was still no sign of Brooks so we got on our first train. Then shit hit the fan again. We basically made every mistake there was to make.

The problem started with the fact that train tickets are relatively expensive. However, as students in the state of Hessen, we could take any train within Hessen for free.

This is the route we took getting there, so we did this deal where you buy a Bayern (a.k.a. Bavaria) pass for €22 and then each additional person is only €2 for up to 5 people, so it was only around €8 per person. That way we were covered for the whole trip.

The plan was to do the same thing on the way back. However, the route we got from the ticket machine took us like this instead:

This meant that our tickets weren't valid for the whole route. On our first train the ticket checker told us that he wouldn't fine us, but we would have to get off at Stuttgart and buy new tickets. We did and bought the regional pass for Baden-Württemberg as well. Unfortunately, the next train wouldn't be coming until almost 5am, and it was only around 1:30. We tried to sleep on the train station floor, but it was so cold I don’t think any of us got more than a half hour of sleep.  

We were on the next train for about an hour, then had a twenty minute layover, and then got on the train to Frankfurt. When the ticket checker came to check our tickets, we encountered yet another problem. Our tickets were night tickets, so they were only valid until 6am, and this train had left at 7:20am. We all wanted to die. Thankfully we were able to just buy yet another regional pass so we weren't fined, but that put us at our third regional ticket for the night.

We got to Frankfurt and it felt good to finally be in a familiar train station, and we only had to wait about ten minutes before our train to Marburg arrived.

I should also mention that I was particularly stressed because I still had no money or proof of ID throughout this whole ordeal, as well as no student ID. Luckily, Lina (a Polish-German student) had her pass from last year that was still good for a few more days, so I was using that. The issue was, that there was the chance that the checker would notice that two of us had the same name, and I had no ID to prove I was a student either.

Luckily it worked fine, and we arrived in Marburg around 11am. We took the bus back to our dorm, and Lina helped me call the emergency number to be let into my room and get new keys (which will cost me about €230 next week).

We finally found out Monday what had happened to Brooks. Around the time we had separated, he had already had 5 liters of beer (over the course of 3-4 hours). To give you an idea of how much alcohol that is, that's about 28 cans of beer (alcohol-wise), and he drank one about every 9 minutes. He doesn't remember anything after that point. Upon talking with people he was with, he had at least 7 liters, and based on his money, he could have bought as many as ten. He woke up in a hospital with a BAC of 0.37. Yes, you read that right. Most people would have died. So even though I had a terrible experience, at least I didn't almost die. 

And thus concludes the story of my disaster. However, I want everyone who reads this to understand that Oktoberfest was still amazing, so next week I will be posting a description of my wonderful Friday night and Saturday morning!