Oktoberfest

I had always wanted to go to Oktoberfest but due to some poor planning and limited monetary funds I never made it there during my study abroad in Madrid. So when my friends Ilana and Allie proposed we go to Oktoberfest in Argentina I hopped on the bus (literally). We left for Oktoberfest at 11pm Thursday night taking a very comfortable sleeper bus. If only planes were as spacious as these buses. We woke up the next morning in Cordoba, the second biggest city in Argentina to the northwest of Buenos Aires. We spent the day exploring the city which is very easy to explore on foot. We stayed at a hostel that served the BEST asado (BBQ) ever.

On Saturday we left Cordoba for a village called Village General Belgrano was an extrordinary festival called Oktoberfest. For a week people came from all over Argentina to celebrate their love for beer and German culture of course. Had I not know I was in Argentina I would have sworn that I was in a tiny village in Germany with men running around in leiderhosen (sp?) and women dressed as bar maids. The actual celebration was on a few acres of land that seemed oddly reminiscent of college day drinking. We arrived at the festival at 11 AM and started sampling the wide range of beers, everything from honey beer to Duff's from the Simpsons, as well as taking in the exceptionally warm weather and folk dancers. It wasn't until we came back later that things got rowdy. The Argentine men are notorious for being pushy but when filled with alcohol they just become persistent. My friends and I would be rudely interrupted by Argentine men asking us "de donde sos?" or where we were from. For what seemed like hours we were answering the same questions of where we were from, what we do, etc. It got to the point where I started lying about what I do and where I am from just to try and ease the boredom. Overall Oktoberfest was a fun experience, a fun experience that I could only handle for one day not an entire weekend. That night we stayed at our friend's cabana they had rented and the five of us girls slept like little puppies in a row. The next day we snuck out of the packed house at 7 and walked down a beautiful dirt road surrounded by horses and watched the sunrise. As we walked down the road in our sun dresses and dirt everywhere we laughed about our adventures and got on the bus to take us back to civilization.