Day 15 - Stuttgart

Anke and Christian got us up at 9:30ish once they got back from their Sat morning job and we headed to the bakery to get buns for breakfast (something not done often in Canada for sure) and then back to the apartment for a big breakfast of buns with cream cheese, sliced ham, cheese ('just' German cheese though, as Rob put it) and blood sausage (which i really liked).
After we washed the dishes, we jumped in the car and drove for about 30 minutes to the Ludwigsburg castle. It was the home of the King and Queen's of Ludwigsburg since 1709. It was amazing (overused word, i know). We took a 90 minute, english guided tour. The place was humoungous with all kinds of rooms and we got to go pretty much everywhere including the King and Queen's rooms (which were on opposite sides of the castle). The King and Queen each had their own rooms and then there was also a huge throne room that had an amazingly painted ceiling. It was painted in a way to make it look like the walls extended upwards and partly in over the room and then opening to a sky full of different gods. It was pretty amazing. Never seen anything like it before. Most of the rooms had similar things on the ceilings and many of the walls had statues of babies, people , and gods coming out of the walls. AFter the castle we went back to their place and we made schnitzel. They showed us how to do it and me and Rob then pounded out the rest of the meat and then dipped them in the flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs.
We ate (it was awesome) and then headed out right away for the Stuttgart version of Oktoberfest call Vonfest (i think). 'Oktoberfest' is only in Munich, but Stuttgart's is pretty much the same (i'll find out soon for myself) except that Christian says that the Munich version has 50% Germans and 50% tourists, whereas the STuttgart one has 95% Germans and only 5% tourists. He says he likes the Stuttgart one alot better. Me and Rob had ZERO clue what to expect. All i knew is that there are about 10 huge tents at both of them and that you go get drunk.
So we took the train to the grounds and it turned out that the tents are in the middle of a huge huge huge fair or carnival. There were all the crazy rides and games and German carnies and then of course these HUGE tents. I think i remember Christian saying that the distance from the first tent to the last is about 500m adn each tent holds 5000 people. So 10-12 tents with about 5000 people in each makes for ALOT of drunk people.
Before we even got into our tent we saw two guys giong at it right in front of the ten doors before 8 huge security guys jumped on them (literally), cuffed them, adn threw them in police cars. Christian hardly seemed to notice, but me and Rob were both starting to wonder what the hell we'd gotten ourselves into.
We finally got into a tent by 7:30ish and I was blown away. There were people everywhere drinking from huge 1L mugs. There was a huge stage on one end with a live band (about a 15 person orchestra style band with a couple of singers, two drummers, two keyboards, guitars, and 8 guys playing different brass instruments) and just these HUGE, long tables packed with people up dancing on the bench seats. It wasn't even 8 and the place was absolutely insane. The beers were 7.20 Euros/mug of beer.
We found a place to stand between tables up near the stage (which was elevated about 10-15 feet above everything else and was on a slope so that you could see everyone in the band) and got into're! Within about an hour we got room for the three of us and got up on the seats and spend the next few hours dancing and singing and chanting. They have a bunch of different things that they chant between songs that EVERYBODY knows (Christian made sure we knew the most important ones before we got there...we practiced around the dinner table) and so we'd chant and drink adn dance, adn then we'd chant, dance and sing some more. When that was done, we'd chant, sing, and dance some more. It reminded me alot of a Queen's Players show, but with no breaks, so you're up on your seats the whole time and instead of 170 people, there are over 5000 drinking nothign but one liter beers. And EVERYONE was loaded. There were 16 year olds to 80 year olds just smashed out of their trees. There were a few fights around us that quickly got worked out by the security literally dragging people out. I had a drunk, German, 50 year old cougar on my right side who would've been really easy to go home with and in front of us this 40 year old lady kept pushing the guy next to her and he had no sense of balance left and would fall into the people on his other side or onto us, so me and Rob were basically holding him by his shirt collar trying to keep him up. I finally told her to stop pushing him (thnking she just wanted this drunk guy away from her) to which she looked at me and said "He's my bloody husband and i was the dam bloke to sit down because he's fucking hammered". We couldn't stop laughing at this and then i said to her that if he's her husband, who's the guy with his arm around her and she said "I don't have a clue!!!!". It was hilarious. She was hammered as well and i ended up dancing with her later on...haha.
We stayed till 11 when they closed the taps adn we jumped onto 1 of the 2 HUGE ferris wheels while right pissed and then got some German candy that we passed around to EVERYONE (or tried to anyways) during our train ride home.
From teh train station we had a very stumbly walk to Christian's place with him showing us a pretty cool way to turn off street lights on the way home (until we got yelled at).
Anke was very patient with us and got out of bed and very nicely asked us to shut the hell up in the living room. Christian went to bed soon after that and Rob passed out (can't really call it going to bed, just passing out) and I decided that i wanted to share how good of a time i had with everyone so i called about 5 differnet people, although i dont' remember much of it.
Anwyays, it was an amazing night and i'm still blown away by the party. 50-60 thousand people drinking from 9am till 11pm. Rediculous. To Munich tomorrow to do it all again MOnday starting at 7am!