My hb Marten is the one responsible for me most of the time, and he likes to have a plan! Originally the plan was to go to Hamburg, then home, then Hannover to Octoberfest. Well I got up nice and early and was ready to go when Marten walks in and says "no today we are going to Holland, do you have your passport?" My other host brother Thorsten needed a part for the tractor from a town called Meppen which is close to the border and we were going to try to see Holland anyway to visit everyone's favorite aunt.
Meppen was the first stop and they were having a market so we wandered through the market on our way to the John Deere store. On an unrelated note, at home we have a couscous guy come is and chop corn with a Claas chopper which is German, it is this big beautiful machine that an American drives. Here they have a John Deere chopper, American, being driven by Germans. I found that all quite funny. ANYWAYS we get the part, the dealerships all look the same on the inside, regardless of if you are in America, Finland or Germany, which is a comforting thought. Off we went to Holland next.
All the houses in Holland look alike. It is the same nice brick house over and over which is nice looking and creepy at the same time. There really isn't much to say about this trip, the aunt and uncle are very nice, they fed us and invited me to come back whenever I want (maybe one day I will need a place to stay in Holland? I thought it was nice of them to say it though). As we were leaving, Marten told me about a firework factory that had blown up in the town about 13 years ago. It blew up blocks of buildings and set fires all over. His aunt and uncle's house was blown up -- they had randomly decided to go swimming on the other side of town when it happened. Life is crazy like that isn't it?
We dropped off the part and tried to go dirndl shopping but being so close to Octoberfest there wasn't much of a selection left. After that we met up with Kim and Bea who we're going to Octoberfest with us and away we went.
Octoberfest was fun, and surprisingly like I had pictured it in my head, large tables with German people in their national dress dancing on them and singing loudly with large, large beers in their hands. The part that I hadn't anticipated was how American the music playing was! It was a German band, mostly in their fifties singing songs like "we will rock you." They played German songs too, but that one really caught me off guard. We stayed until it closed at midnight but we only got there at 10:30 so no rowdy behavior from us!
And when my head hit the pillow that night I was already asleep, We had had a very long day and I was a tired IFYE if there ever was one!
