Day One Munch - Tierpark Zoo

After a 2 hour flight we landed in Munich, our flight was full of rowdy men on bachelor parties & weekends away, 80% were definitely drunk when we landed. Nathan & I decided to stay sober as we sucked at directions let alone after a few drinks.
The crowd from the plane dispersed after baggage claim fairly quickly, whilst we stood at the doors looking like lemons having no idea where to go. After an hour we found an information machine, we pressed a few buttons & a lady appeared on the screen in front of us. It was like something from Harry Potter! We showed her the address of our campsite & she googled directions from where ever she was in the world & put a train map of how to get there on another screen in front of us.

A few trains, a bus & a little walk later we arrived at the campsite & were greeted by a really drunk Rhys, who only spotted us because of Nathan’s beard. The busabout crew were so friendly & we were stoked to hear someone speaking English! We left our passports with them to look after & were given tent number 10 out of about 100 little orange tents squished together. It was a lot cleaner than we expected & thankfully the toilets & showers were about 15 meters away, however the tent space inside was tiny. We had two separate inflatable mattresses which wouldn’t stay inflated overnight, so we took it in turns to sleep on a piece of fabric slowly deflating eventuating with us lying on the ground. We were starting to miss the not so shabby hostels about this point.

We had arrived in Germany a day earlier than everyone & the orientation walk into town wasn’t until 4pm so we decided to go for a wander & explore the area. We stumbled across a zoo in Tierpark about 10 minutes from the campsite.
The zoo was amazing, would definitely recommend going if in Germany! The enclosures were fairly open so you could see most of the animals without having a glass barrier reflect the flash of your phone when taking a photo. Although the lions were a bit scary, two males paced only stopping to stare at the people in the crowd whilst licking their lips. All that separated them was a water ditch around their pen & a wall. Ok, that would probably be enough but it was still scary! They had two small sharks, some jelly fish & some funky looking fish! We stopped to take a photo of a chimpanzee, who came running up when a little kid standing next to us put his arm out straight offering his half eaten chicken to the chimpanzee. There was glass in the way so it just sat there staring at the food.
We stopped for lunch at a cafe right in front of the elephant park which was great, there was a family of them plodding around 10 meters in front of us whilst we ate chips & sausages.
They had a rhino who walked straight below us in his little river, a sleeping cheetah, hiding tiger & some of your average space-filler-animals like turtles & goats. There was a moose who was beautiful but the poor thing had its antlers chopped off, as did the rhino.
My favorite part was right at the end, a mumma polar bear with it’s two twin cubs shared an enclosure. The mum sat on top of a rock staring at a yellow ball floating in the water below, after a few minutes it took a big leap and dove into the water. After dragging the ball back to the rock it sat there posing with its paw on the ball. Then one of the little ones clambered up the back of the rock, snuck up behind the mum & pawed the ball from her grasp into the water below. The cub jumped onto it’s belly & slid down the rock into the water, it was so adorable. The two cubs continued to play in the water diving on the floating balls & play fighting with each other, I could have happily sat there all day watching them.

We left the zoo & head back to the camping ground for the group tour, which we only just made in time as our phones hadn’t changed to the right time zone.
A large group of mostly Australians & few a English clambered onto the bus. Over the next hour our tour guide rapped the safety procedures, we met some drunk English men, got stuck in some heavy traffic & a guy sitting behind us had to run off the bus before he peed himself.
After a long walk through town & missing every piece of information as I couldn’t keep up without my crutches we were left to wander for an hour to find some laderhosen & garter or go have a few drinks. We completely forgot about the time difference so luckily we walked back a bit early to see our group just walking away. We caught up & ended up going to a place called Opera for dinner & drinks. We’d got changed into our outfits so no one recognized us at first, they thought we were some random weirdo’s who just decided to join their group. (The outfits were really bloody expensive too - 100 Euros for Nathan’s pants & shirt, 75 Euros for my dress & little shirt thingy - but our ones we got online were see-through & tacky)
We all ordered a pork knuckle & Nathan had half a chicken with a stein of beer each. Seeing as Nathan & I don’t really drink much any more I was pretty stoked to have finished a stein before the 7 other guys sitting at our table. I soon got the nick name ‘Minesweeper’ because I tried to sneak a few beers after again beating the boys at finishing my second stein. Two steins down we head off to catch the bus home, but I couldn’t keep up (Again) because of my hip, I can’t run yet, or jog or even skip, so we missed the bus. Nathan ran up the street to wave it down but the driver wouldn’t wait for me. So we ducked into a hostel with a night club area with one of the other guys, Luke, from the tour to use the toilet. The last bus home didn’t come for another hour so we had a sneaky drink & a little dance.
We got home around 11pm & kept drinking back at the campsite with the group. Nathan went around the tents shouting out trying to find his sister & a few friends.
The atmosphere was great & everyone was so friendly, it was a great way to start Oktoberfest.