Happy Thanksgiving and Oktoberfest

I hope everyone had a good weekend. I had a great weekend. Thursday and Friday was Oktoberfest here, there was a blue and white tent set up on campus, so I went both nights. The first night there were probably about a 100 people or so, just sitting drinking beer and eating brautwurst, staup, and bretzel. Really good, though Tom and Nathan from my floor were complaining that they didn´t have any saurkraut. A brass band played for a few minutes and then a choir sang, mostly Bavarian music. There were a few heaters along the one side of the tent but it was still pretty cold inside. Some people tried to keep warm by drinking the Jagermeitzer.

The second night, which was the main night, was intense. I didn´t go until later, but there was a line up just to get inside the tent. Many people though found a secret way in (though not really that secret) on the other side, which had an opening and people were walking in and out of it. There must have been most of the school´s population there (which is around 8000 students). The place was packed with people, people were even on the tables. At least this time the place was pretty warm. I missed the German Ambassador though, he was suppose to tap the keg earlier in the day. I think they only started having oktoberfest a few years ago, but they get a lot of german exchange students so it makes sense.

Sunday was such a beautiful day. Bright blue skies, fairly warm, a really nice fall day. The leaves are already falling, and there is some colour, orange and yellow on the trees and bright red on some bushes, so I have not missed autumn. Tom and I went to one of the pools in the afternoon and went swimming. I want to try and go swimming more often. Swimming is a big pasttime here, and even their outdoor pools and hotpots are open all year round. I went with a few people last week when it much have been around 5°C or less with wind and was an adventure running from the building to the pool, then to the hotpots, and then back. Though after being in the hottest hotpot at about 42-44°C it didn´t feel so cold on the way out.

The other Canadians on my floor and I improvised a Thanksgiving dinner for the night. Iceland doesn´t celebrate Thanksgiving, and I don´t even think they have turkeys, we haven´t seen any. So instead we had two chickens, potatoes, beans, carrots and gravy, and for dessert we had apple crumble. Very delicious. A few Americans kept asking what we were doing and when we told them we were having Thanksgiving, they would make some comment about how Thanksgiving can´t happen until after Halloween. They´d also make a comment on 'Do Canadians always eat chickens for thanksgiving?'. Harold, one of the Americans, thinks they should be able to get turkeys on the American base here so they might take a trip there (near Keflavik) to get one for their Thanksgiving. But overall it was a good evening.