Month 2: Oktoberfest and the rest of October
So here’s the thing. After September I stopped posting articles regularly. I don’t think I stopped because I got lazy, I think I stopped because I was enjoying myself too much. Now I’m back in the United States and I wanted to finish what I started. So instead of posting about every week after my second post I decided to consolidate the next few months into posts for each month.
My October abroad was filled with many more adventures. It started with Octoberfest, a seemingly culturally German event with a curious amount of Americans in attendance. It took place in a huge park in Munich, Germany complete with tents erected by the biggest names in German beer. There were rides, carnival style food, floods of people and of course, copious amounts of German beer.
I flew back to Copenhagen early that Monday morning which was a terrible idea. I had class that morning and walked in dead tired and maybe a little bit hungover.
On the first Wednesday in October I got my first ever haircut outside the states. My friend Ryan and I went to this affordable barber outside the city. The man who cut my hair was originally from Iran and he spoke very little English. Needless to say I had to pretty much put all my trust into this man, praying he wouldn’t cause another Britney Spears fiasco and embarrass me for the rest of my study abroad experience.
I know haircuts are super exciting but lets move on.
Fall in Copenhagen was such a beautiful time. Yeah we couldn’t swim anymore because we would probably have gotten hypothermia and yeah it was starting to get colder (surprise, surprise) but the weather was generally pretty good and the color of the landscape fit in particularly well with the city.
October was full of even more traveling. My entrepreneurship class traveled to Berlin for a week. Talk about a crazy city. It is effortlessly modern with a crazy past that is still somehow preserved. One of the craziest aspects of the city was the Fernsehturm, an over 800 foot “TV” tower built in the center of the city by the GDR (German Democratic Republic). The communists built the tower not for TV but really to spy on the Westerners. Good thing the wall fell down. Anyways, here are some of the spots I liked.
We also got to visit some important European startups that are headquartered there. Who knew Berlin was such a hub for startup activity?
Another fun experience I had during October was on a party bus in Copenhagen. My Chi Psi brother Macrae was having his 21st birthday and he invited all of his friends. We rode this bus for two hours around the city before we stopped at a club to end the night. The bus had party sized speakers and the ratio of girls to guys was 3:1, because abroad. The bus flew around corners and half the bus almost fell down every time. American party buses would certainly not be as dangerous but that’s what made it so much fun.
The last great adventure I had traveling in October before my travel week was in Amsterdam. Every year the city hosts a music festival called AMF (Amsterdam Music Festival). The best in EDM came in town to perform from 9PM on October 20th to 6AM the morning of October 21st. We saw David Guetta, KSHMR, and Like Mike among other artists.
The music festival was not the only reason why we went to Amsterdam. We explored several parts of the rest of the city as well.
Amsterdam seemed like a lawless place before I went but in many ways it reminded me of Copenhagen. Except I think the water might have been cleaner in Cope. And Amsterdam was more touristy. Can you say Red Lights?
I did some more traveling in October because our program (DIS) gave us a week off from class but I think I might have to make an entire separate post. This post is long enough 😂
