The beginning of this week was essentially dedicated to
telling everyone all of our crazy outback stories. Classes sorta happened too.
Wednesday night, the boys (Tim, Matt, Liam, and I) had another shot at night
golf and this time we weren’t denied at the door. I’m not particularly good at
golf, but I still talked a lot of smack for the hours leading up to tee-off. Well,
I have never lost so many stupid golf balls before. I swear, I hit them right
down the fairway and they just straight up disappeared. No trace. Night golf is
hard. It still was a ton of fun playing under the lights though.
Thursday
was supposed to be the customary beach day for Liam and me before it started torrential
down pouring mid-morning. While we were trying to figure out how to salvage the
day, it occurred to me that The Martian had just hit theaters. Having devoured
the book in less than 24 hours this summer, I was totally down to blow a couple
hours watching Matt Damon get rescued… again (you’d think that after Saving
Private Ryan, The Bourne Identity, and Interstellar, someone would have
realized that this dude needs adult supervision like 24/7). So we spent the
afternoon gorging on popcorn and some beautiful cinematics. It’s a great flick,
see it if you get the chance.
This was the first weekend that we didn’t have anything
major planned so for the first time, the Goon Squad split up (it’s shocking, I
know). Tim’s parents were here so he met up with them in Brisbane and Matt,
Monika, Anna, and Sarah went to Sydney for the weekend. As the only squad
survivors, Liam, Courtney, Julia, and I caught wind of Oktoberfest in Brisbane that
was being hailed as one of the largest in the world. A bunch of Americans, a
German beer festival, in Australia? Yup, that sounds to be right up our alley.
We loaded up on the train early Saturday morning with
another American student at Bond named Shane. He’s a wicked chill Californian
with some pretty rad surf stories. After somehow getting lost twice looking for
the massive fairgrounds in Brisbane (we struggle to get around without Tim
leading the way, not gonna lie), we finally made it to Oktoberfest. We bought
our steins and prepared for a full day of quality German bier and schnitzel. There
was only one major problem: quality German bier and schnitzel in Australia is
apparently super expensive. Our rapidly depleting college bank accounts weren’t
exactly overjoyed. Nevertheless, we enjoyed some authentic German ale and
music.
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| From Left: Shane, Liam, Courtney, Julia, Me |
We decided around noon to explore Brisbane a bit and return back when
the festivities ramped up later that night. A short walk from the fairground
brought us to a bar called Taps which had an entire wall of custom beers on tap
that were considerably cheaper than the ones at Oktoberfest. We befriended the
bartenders there and ate, drank, and made merry.
We
headed back to Oktoberfest in late afternoon in good spirits and were
absolutely stoked to see that the crowd had quadrupled in size. There was a
massive tent decorated in wreaths and images of the Bavarian Alps that really
gave the feel of Germany. And this tent was PACKED.
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| A sea of lederhosen |
The same band that we saw
playing earlier in the morning was back on stage and they were rocking (in
German of course, so we had no idea what they were actually saying). We snagged
a few more brews and ventured into the pulsating mass of humanity. It was freakin
amazing. Naturally, no one knew the words to any of the songs so our “singing”
consisted of harsh, guttural noises which would have made an actual German cry.
Every once in a while the band would play a song in English and the crowd would
go nuts. I discovered my new favorite song while at Oktoberfest too. It’s
called Fliegerlied.
The hottest song of 2015. Peep it
It’s a song about being really happy and talking about how wonderful of a day
it is. They have this ridiculous dance with it too that everyone knew by the
end of the night.
It was honestly so much fun. Unfortunately we had to catch
the train to campus so we had to bid auf Wiedersehen to our small slice of
Germany while the party was still bumpin’. I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable
our Australian Octoberfest was and I can only imagine how crazy the German
Oktoberfest is. It’s definitely getting written down in permanent marker on my
bucket list.
We
ended the week appropriately at Waxy’s where we were able to reflect that it’s impossible
to have even a remotely dull moment in Australia. Another good week for the
books.
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