Third day at Oktoberfest was our last.  Le boo.

Anne and I tried to get our shit together and wake up early so that we could walk around and pretend that we saw at least *some* of Munich outside of the beer tents.  We gave ourselves a solid 60 minutes of walking around time.  More than enough to see a giant city with no map, right?  Here is what I look like in the morning – puffy eyes galore.  Annie is the cutest.

Being extremely resourceful (read: stuck without a map and no data roaming on our iPhones), we stumbled down a random alleyway into a small courtyard in the middle of the deserted city.  Where we found this:

What is this, you ask?  I have no fucking idea.  It looked like a giant community of German folk bands all standing together in the middle of nowhere, looking at each other.  You would *think* they would play their instruments at some point, you know, having instruments in their hands and all, but Annie and I stood there waiting for over 30 minutes waiting for something to happen.  And they just stood there shuffling slightly to the left or right.

Finally, we decided to go into the adjacent Starbucks and get a coffee so that we had something to do while waiting for SOMETHING *BIG* TO HAPPEN with the German folk bands.  I went to the washroom, too.  DID YOU KNOW that washrooms at Starbucks’ in downtown Munich are like, in super fucking cool underground CAVES?  Where you have to go into what looks like a haunted cellar door, then into the basement of a fucking underground LAIR?  YEAH  IT WAS PRETTY COOL.

Finally the bands played like three bars of music then they stopped and started looking around again so we we left to walk around some more.

See all the Police?  What is going on you say?

Two things became quickly apparent:

1. It was a national holiday in Germany and there were police EVERYWHERE to prevent drunk German mob-fighting; and
2. In order to be a female police officer in Germany you have to be tall, blond, and smoking hot.

What with all the underground washroom caves, the blond policewomen, and the instrument-holding-stand-around mob, it was shaping up to be a fabulous day.

On to the tent we booked for day three: Hippodrom.

As you can see, we welcomed the morning with another huge log of cheese paste and salted turnips.

Hippodrom was supposedly the “exclusive” tent that was really “hard to get into”, not unlike a “hot, hot club”… so of course I was automatically a bit skeptical.  I like my beer tents “trashy and non-exclusive”.

There WERE a larger proportion of ladies with fake tits… and we saw two ladies with fake breasticles doing a line of coke on the table next to us… so yeah, very similar to a “hot, hot club”.

However, the tent was beautiful, they had an all-day live band and the beer was delicious.  So I was happy.

The other main difference between this tent and the others is that this one served alcohol *other* than beer.  Two of the girls in my group (I feel the need to clarify that neither one is me…), are not partial to beer… for them, the first two days were not as enjoyable as they could have been, alcohol-wise… so this was a way for them to get drunk with a bit more comfort.

The two non-beer ladies chose to order Champagne.  Two bottles.  So like, one bottle each.  You is some cra-zhy guys!

Things started a bit slow.  I mean, everyone looks just like, sober and normal.

Apparently, I decided that on day three I was going to try really hard to look like a transvestite man, as you can see below.

 This picture is only *sorta* getting a little sloppy… Travis is pulling the fart eyes down there in the corner.

…and then Sarah drank a whole bottle of Champagne to herself…

…and then other people started acting like idiots.

Awwwww, look how nice the picture below is:

You would never know that this was the picture taken immediately before it:

The transvestite man is unhappy about something and decided to shout her/his disapproval in a low baritone:

At some point we left the tent.  I remember walking slowly in the sun aimlessly.  Then I remember sitting outside at another tent.  Which tent? I have no idea.

What I DO remember is that there were no places to sit on the outdoor patio, and they don’t serve you delicious beer unless you are sitting down.  We then noticed a table for eight with only four people seated at it.  The waitress said to us “Seat?  Seat?  Seat over there! THERE!” …and ushered us to this table.

Unbeknownst to us, these four men had been belligerent all day… had broken several glasses on the table, and were so out of their minds incomprehensible drunk that the waitress couldn’t even speak to them to kick them out.  She thought if we sat down they would get the picture and get up and leave.

But no.  They befriended us.  They really liked me and my low-cut dress.  One man made me sit on his lap as a “toll” for us to sit at the table.  So yeah, vomit in my mouth.  They were all Eastern European and REALLY liked that I am Croatian.  Oh yeah.  They liked me.  They liked me a lot.

The Serbian gentleman pictured below has no teeth (he also stole my hat):

The gentleman pictured below sat in this position for about two hours straight speaking to no one:

At some point we all realized that we should probably leave… some people threw up… some people cried… it was a clusterfuck, really.

This part got a little fuzzy – I seem to remember three of us girls having SERIOUS trouble figuring out how to get back to the hotel for the following reasons:

1. Walking was out of the question due to drunken fatigue and no sense of direction;
2. We had no idea where the subway was; and
3. There were no cabs.

I have this vision of us walking around for the Oktoberfest gate for 30 minutes… wailing to each other in drunken loud obnoxious girl voices “HOWWWW  are we going to get bAAAACK”…

…while walking in circles around a Rickshaw.  Like OVER AND OVER AND OVER:

All of a sudden, it was like we had been standing next to the rickshaw for twenty minutes wailing, when we turned around and were all like “THERE’S A RICKSHAW!!!” Like we had invented the idea of a rickshaw.

Please see below for a shot of Tomas, our rickshaw (to make it extra German you have to put emphasis on the “mas”, like To-MAS).  PLEASE NOTE HOW MANY RICKSHAWS THERE ARE AROUND HIM THAT WE DID NOT SEE.

Drunnnnk ladiiiieeesss, takin’ pictuuuuures!  Every drunk lady thinks pictures are a great idea.  It’s science.

Oh To-MAS, you so crazy.

Then we went to Pizza Hut.  End of day.

Incidentally, since posting about the two first days, I have come across some additional pictures.

From day two – Here we are sitting with the table of German people next to us for a photo.  Please note how “familiar” the gentleman in the lower right-hand corner is being with Anne…

But Anne doesn’t seem to mind.

Agnes is *very* happy about the fact that cotton candy cost the equivalent of 30 cents.  She kept yelling “DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THIS COST?  DO YOU?  THIRTY CENTS!  I LOVE EUROPE!”

And then from day one below… some pictures of me sitting with a table of guys from Holland.  I do not remember this occuring at all.  Let’s also note that I am holding a cookie necklace that is not mine, and I have clearly crushed it with my overzealous man-hands.  The man sitting directly across from me is pretty upset with me – look at his kill-eyes.

Also – WHEN did my hair get French braided?  By whom?  These are still mysteries.

But award for best candid photo is the one below, where I am obviously trying to steal cigarettes from Holland Jared Leto while giving him my digits as a distraction.  I can just imagine myself being like

“…uh yeah… 1-1-3-2-4-5-6-2-24-4-2-3–6-4-3… but like, that number might not work in Holland.”

Next post is about my one-day adventure in Vienna, then off to Prague!

So the next day at Oktoberfest was my birthday.  Truth.  Birthday at Oktoberfest like a piiiiiimp.  I was pretty excited, because it gave me an excuse to do the following things on my birthday without being seen as a “self indulgent weirdo”:

1. Dress in costume;
2. Drink copious amounts of beer; and
3. Demand attention from old German men.

As you can see, the day had all the ingredients to be amazing.  We had reservations at the Schottenhamel Tent and we got started early.

So, apparently there is this thing at Oktoberfest where you buy people you “like” cookies that have various German sayings on them.  Since my friends are completely awesome, they all pitched in to buy me a HUGE (and expensive) German necklace cookie that said “Happi Borsdai”.  It was like two feet across and like ten pounds.  

We started the day with some ‘cheese paste’ and turnips with salt on them.  You know, the good stuff.

They really like their salted turnips.  Trust me.  Look how drunk I am already:

Alright, let’s get down to the nuts.

There’s this thing at Oktoberfest called “chugging”.  If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s when you “chug” the contents of your beer down your throat all fast-like.  Since the steins at Oktoberfest are a full litre, it’s understandably a big deal when you chug your stein.  There is this tradition around it and everyone goes MENTAL when you chug.  ESPECIALLY if you are a girl.  So the deal is this:

1. Stand up on your table
2. Chug your beer to the insane drunk cheers of your thousands of new European friends

If you succeed in chugging your whole beer, you get to revel in the idolatry of inebriated old German men while sunlight shines down on you like in the beginning of The Lion King when Moufasa holds Simba up in the air.  If you fail, you get simultaneously pelted with pieces of old pretzels by hundreds of people.

So… it was my birthday…

And… I can chug a tidy beer…

And… I had on my giant birthday cookie of confidence.

So I decided that today was the day that I was going to stand on my table and chug a litre of beer. 

Let me preface this story by saying I intentionally traded in my “half full” stein of beer for a “totally full” stein of beer before I started chugging because I didn’t want to be a “giant pussy”.

Let’s view the video below to see how things went:

YEAH.  I was about 2/3rd of the way through my LITRE of beer, when the German security guard stopped me.

WHY??? You ask?

BECAUSE APPARENTLY, girls aren’t “allowed” to chug full steins.  GIRLS AREN’T ALLOWED.  That’s what the guy told me after. 

Now, I can understand that this rule is *probably* based on past experience they’ve gathered from years of girls trying to chug full steins then projectile barfing all over everyone.  However.  THOSE GIRLS AREN’T NATALIE.  Natalie can chug a litre of beer then ace a Physics exam.

At least I can take comfort in the fact that the whole tent of drunk people was on my side and booed the security guard then threw a bunch of pretzels at him.

The thesis of this story, as you can probably tell by my previous displays of awesomeness, is that I AM TOO HARDCORE FOR OKTOBERFEST.

Anyways, I was happy that I worked up the nerve to even try.   Incidentally, should you ever try to chug a litre stein, here is a tip – make sure you take a deep fucking breath, because it’s not the beer that’ll get ‘cha, it’s the fact that your nose and mouth are fucking sealed off in a glass with no oxygen for like a minute. 

Personally, I was *SO* nervous that I was breathing like an overweight Texan, so it was ten times worse.  Here is an artist’s rendition:

The table next to us was full of nice German people, and they took a liking to us, probably because we were playing Uno, which is apparently the United Nations of card games. 

They were SO nice that they even gave us their desserts, which were the most fucking delicious apple crisp things with apple sauce on the side EVER.

In the afternoon we decided to walk around the fairgrounds and go on roller coasters and drink more beer.  This roller coaster is called the Munchen Pooping, and it was in the shape of the Olympic rings. 

Since Munich hosted the Olympic games in 1972, and since there is no real other reason for it to be in the shape of the Olympic rings OTHER than the fact that it was built for the Olympics, that makes this roller coaster (that gets torn down and rebuilt every year by carnies) FORTY YEARS OLD.  I did not ride it.  I chose to stay back and drink more beer in the sun with my giant cookie.

That night, we went to an amazing dinner at a German restaurant and I ate  more ‘cheese paste’ and salted turnips.  IT WAS AMAZING. 

I also was instructed to bring my giant cookie to ensure my embarrassment would be as prolonged as possible, which was also amazing. 

Plus, the restaurant was so wonderful and nice that they gave me a free ceramic birthday stein. 

Incidentally, with my toque and my weird cookie and my cup everyone thought I looked like a homeless person and we were so drunk that it was hilarious to everyone.

Best Oktoberfest birthday ever.  Despite lack of full chug.  Here is an arty picture I took while we walked home drunk:

Tomorrow, my last day at Oktoberfest , but then on to more European adventures…  stay tuned.

I know there has been a black hole in your life for the last month.  A black hole that can only be filled by sweet, sweet Natalie.

Rest assured that I have been scurrying about, adventuring and making mistakes with my life for the sole purpose of entertaining you.  As per several earlier posts, you may know that I have been counting down to a huge, mega-baller vacation to Europe.  It arrived, finally, and it was just as sweet as I imagined.  Sweeter than that moment when you add in the powdered cheese to your Kraft Dinner and it starts to react with the milk and margarine in the pot and then it melts and get all ‘non-powdery’ and you think you yourself “I’m going to eat this Kraft Dinner in less than 60 seconds.”

COULD anything be sweeter than that moment?  Yes. Yes it could.

Let’s rewind to the week before, when I was working 13 hour days for what seemed like three weeks straight to ensure I could actually take vacation in good conscience.   I literally worked until 1:00 am the FRIDAY BEFORE MY FLIGHT, then decided to just get fucked on cheap shitty Wine Rack wine, and at 3:00 am packed my flight essentials:

As you may or may not know, I have a disease called “Bitch Can’t Sleep on Planes”, which makes me unable to sleep on planes.  I have tried sleeping pills, Gravol, neck pillows, back-to-back movies starring Kristen Stewart, but none of it seems to work.  This time I again packed sleeping pills, but also created five “jelly bean surprise” snack-packs for each 90 minutes of plane time so that I could give myself a treat to pass the time if I didn’t fall asleep.

As a side note, I think I am actually, honestly, no-jokes-this-is-serious-and-should-go-to-counselling… addicted to jelly beans.  But let’s leave that for a later post.

Airport beers are the best beers because it makes the airport less awkward. And the airport is pretty awkward.  ALSO, this beer indicated the start of my vacation, so he deserved to be commemorated.

I didn’t take any pictures on the plane.  I don’t know why.  Usually I take those arty “picture of the wing-slash-picture of my knees-slash-picture of the sunrise over the clouds-slash-picture of the skyline as I’m leaving” pictures.  I guess I was too busy eating jelly beans.

The picture below is the first picture I took in Germany:

Please note that there are FIVE… FIVE different types of sausages on that plate.  EACH SAUSAGE WAS MORE EXHILARATING THAN THE LAST.

There was also Kartofflen Salad, which I quickly realized was German for “Fucking Delicious Potato Salad with Like Dill and Other Delicious Shit” and which was available EVERY-WHERE.

I must have been tired, because there are no other pictures of the sausage plate.  This is the next photo:

Top view of our table at Hofbrau Tent at Oktoberfest.  If you look closely, you can see the top of my boob.

OK.  So.  First stop of the trip was Munich, where I was fortunate enough to meet up with six of my friends who were also being ballers and travelling through Europe.  We made a pact to meet at Oktoberfest and fuck each other up.  Three days and three Oktoberfest tents.

This was day one.  Hofbrauhaus.

Wait, let’s take a look at that last one again:

And let’s just get some stuff out of the way:

Apparently this is the “rowdy” tent.   If you have not been to Oktoberfest in Munich, it is basically a huge fairground  that spans several football fields with about ten giant beer tents that hold like, five thousand people each, and everyone is drunk and dressed in costume (EVERYONE), and smashing huge litre glasses into other huge litre glasses and shattering them everywhere and people getting up and chugging and people throwing pretzels at them and stuff.  I think we were all a little jet-lagged, etc., because this was the day of which I have the least recollection.

You have to “reserve” tables months in advance by pre-buying several litre steins of beer and one half-chicken per person.   Anne is pleased with the prospect of chicken:

Ok… so… there was a point in the day when things started to not be that clear anymore…

I remember the table of guys next to us kept pushing their butts up against us, trying to take up precious “Bench Butt Space” as the space in the tents is scarce.

Then I remember being out for a smoke with them.

Then I remember them all like sitting at our table playing Uno.

Like, who’s this guy?  I have no fucking idea.

Who are these fucking chicks?  I have no recollection of this whatsoever.

Nope, never seen that guy in my life.

Yep, no idea.

For your consideration, in the image below, none of the men sitting with us is from our group.  Do we seem concerned?  Of course not.  There is a pretzel of unity at the table.

Best part of the picture above is the “Drunken Slow Drink” face of the guy on the left.  We called him “Holland Jared Leto”  because he was from Holland and he looked like Jared Leto.

Agnes is going to kill me for posting the picture above but I love it because it’s like a pure, visceral depiction of pure drunken joy.  BEST.

Ok, so one of the Holland boys sitting at the table took a liking to me and for some reason I gave him my email address.  I do not recall doing this, and the next morning when I woke up (more on that later…), I found these two pictures in my email, entitled “Drunk Photo”:

I think he bought “Boiled Kartofflens” and I stole one off his plate ate it out of my hand like an apple.  I also had the hand burns to prove it.

At some point we left the tent and walked around aimlessly in the fairgrounds.

Anne and I ran into these guys and naturally asked them to have a cigar and wear their hat.

Just so you know – those hats with the like bush-y, barber’s brush-type feather thing on the back are like THOUSANDS of dollars.  Why?  I don’t know.  I didn’t care enough to continue my research.

“Tongue sticking out in photo” is classic.  Classic.

Anyways, sorry to be anti-climactic about the throw up part but I woke up at 2:00 am and basically painted the hotel bathroom in vomit.

heh… read on tomorrow, when I discover I am TOO HARDCORE FOR OKTOBERFEST…

I HAVE ONE MORE DAY OF CRAZY CRAZY BUSY WORK BEFORE GOING ON A TWO WEEK LUXURY BALLER VACATION IN EUROPE.

This is what today feels like…

For those of you who question my Internet omnipotence, observe.

In my obsessive search for a German Dirndl to wear for my Oktoberfest trip this fall, I discovered that when buying a Dirndl, you have three real options:

1. Buy a fetishist Dirndl costume made from flame-retardant plastic and feathers for $19.99 at the Stag Shop.
2. Buy a new authentic Dirndl online for $300 +; or
3. BE NATALIE AND BE AWESOME

Option 3 above is obviously the one I decided to go with.  I scoured craigslist for a few weeks waiting for my time to pounce on a vintage or used Dirndl, and my obsessiveness quickly paid off.

I managed to find an old German couple out in Mississauga selling TWO, count ‘em, TWO authentic German Dirndls in PERFECT condition.  I negotiated them down to $110.00 for both, kept one and gave one to one of the other girls in my Oktoberfest crew.

BLAP!

DOUBLE BLAP!

She’s a couple of sizes too big, but I’m a whiz with the ol’ sewing machine.  I’m also going to shorten it to be sluttier.

I celebrated my dominance over the world with a huge dinner composed exclusively of cheese, spicy meats, and salty things.

Incidentally, did you know that deviled eggs are fucking delicious?  I totally forgot they existed and now I eat about 25 a day.

Also, here is some cheese.

So, as mentioned previously, I’m heading to Europe at the end of September and I’m starting to get preeeetty excited.  Here is the schedule:

• 4 days in Munich during Oktoberfest
• 2 days in Vienna bein’ bad-ass
• 6 days in Prague  ballin’ large

Being in Munich during Oktoberfest is going to be figgin’ amazing, not just because I’ll get to be part of such an iconic event, but also because me and the four other girls on our “travel squad” have decided to be one with the locals and buy “Dirndls” (i.e. German Wench Dress Thing) so that we can get drunk in costume, which is infinitely better than getting drunk in your regular-person clothes. 

SO.  With that in mind, please help me pick my amazing German Dirndl (PLEASE NOTE that I will not be wearing a circa 1999 steam-punk choker with stars and suns hanging from it as shown in the photo):

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Option 1: Red

Option 2: Light Blue

Option 3: Dark Blue

After a day of fishing, swimming, screaming, and gorging ourselves on food, it seemed fitting to blow up a bunch of expensive fireworks into the bowels of nature.  So some of the boys decided to let their wieners hang low and set up a handy “setting off explosives” area at the end of the dock, right next to the gas tanks in the two boats.

We had a choice between the “$85.00″ fireworks and the “$250.00″ fireworks at Costco, and being reasonable people who aren’t rich Kings of Siam, we decided to go with the $85.00 ones.  These ones were HUGE and lasted like ONE HOUR and we still didn’t get through them all (due to a brush with death-by-fireworks, we decided to stop). 

And then, as is inevitable when blowing up fireworks, there was the one firework that went horribly wrong, almost killed everybody, and blew up a big planter at the end of the deck.

Fortunately, the only scars from the incident were of the “emotional” and “wiener-deflating” kind.  Thankfully, we had the “smaller fireworks bonanza” package from Costco.  I can only imagine the number of limbs that have been lost as a result of the $250.00 Costco fireworks package.

Fast forward to the next day, where we had some EXCITING ADVENTURES planned for Molly. 

Being a city dog, Molly is not used to having free reign in the wilderness.  So my fear is that she would run off, get killed for fun by a pack of small wild rats, and never be seen again.  However, I wanted to give her some liberty to enjoy herself in the backwoods.  She is a fucking dog after all.

So I got all amped up to have her swim in the lake.

NOW.  To preface this next photo, I want to emphasize three things:

1. According to my intensive Internet research, snub-nosed dogs don’t swim very well because they have trouble breathing AND it’s hard for them to keep their stump-snouts out of the water.
2. Molly had never really swam before.
3. I am a crazy person.

SO I BOUGHT HER A LIFEJACKET.  OK?

YES.  Get all your making-fun-of-me-ness out.  Although I’m sure she could have swam without it, I know she would be labouring, and we were all drinking… and I was just being careful ok?  OK?  LAY OFF ALREADY.

Anyways.  HOW CUTE IS THIS SHIT:

YEAH PRETTY CUTE.  Who’s making fun of dog life jackets now, you heartless asshole???

Anyways.  She was not exactly *loving* the water, so we gave her a few toots in there and she ended up just pooping out on the pontoon boat for the rest of the day with Cece.

That night, another huge, delicious pasta meal.  Sausage and peppers what.  I literally (like, I weighed myself before and after) gained ten pounds eating all the food this weekend.

After we ate so much that we all almost threw up, we decided to play a game.

The game was called “The Game of Things”.

At first, we were all apprehensive about The Game of Things.

But then we starting playing The Game of Things.

Essentially, there are a bunch of cards.  On each of the cards, it asks you to write down a “thing”.

For example, it might ask you “Things that you shouldn’t say to a police officer”… or “Things that make you feel young”… or “Things that you wish existed but don’t.”

Then, everyone secretly writes down their response, they are given to someone who reads them all out.  Then you all have to guess who said what. 

As you can imagine, with a group of drunk adults playing this game… things got a little out of hand.

The game got understandably competitive. 

By the end of the night, most answers contained the words “blow-job machine”.

So all in all, it was a good night.

The next day, we left. 

Everyone was exhausted.

Especially Molly the Adventure Dog.

 I went to a cottage last weekend.  Jealous?  I thought so.  It just so happens that I have super affluent friends (read: friends who can use their grandmas’ cottages) who whisk me off to cottages for the weekend where I live like a Russian Czar (read: fat chick in a bathing suit eating jelly beans) for three days.

The big difference this weekend was I decided to bring Molly, who is, to be perfectly honest, a fucking city dog who is pampered and would never be able to survive for five minutes in the wilderness, because she would probably, like, trot up to a porcupine and lie on her back all playful-like, then get porcupine needles shot into her abdomen-slash-private parts.  So I was a *little* worried that she was going to be a handful.

Did I mention she loves riding in the car while sitting on my lap?  What a spoiled bitch.

Day one, we got up early and went fishing.  I’ve never been fishing before, and I really sucked shit.  I had to use the old-fashioned casts where you hold onto the line with your finger when you throw the cast-y thing, because the ones with the button on the bottom of the cast were too advanced and complicated for my piddly brain.

I also caught nothing in case you were wondering.  Well, one time I felt a little bite, and one time I caught an old stick, or “wood bass” as I understand they are called.

However, I really enjoyed being out on the lake in the early morning.  Like I was a sneaky nature-person, instead of a totally un-nature person like I am for real.

I told these guys they had to do a Titanic shot because they would look stupid and it would make me laugh.  They happily obliged.

Here is one of the places we fished.  Just want to reiterate here that I did not catch any fish.

This gentleman caught “the planet Earth” by catching his hook on a bunch of rocks or some shit… not once…

…or twice…

…but three times.  I guess you have to be a really good fisherman to do that.

Some people did catch some fish that we threw back because we are nice people.

Ok fuck that shit.  Let’s go swimming.

Perfect perfect perfect weather and perfect perfect perfect water.

Tough fuckin’ life.

Then we played cards.  How fucking cool is this packaging?  I want to bone it.

This game is called “Pit”, and you basically sit around each other and scream in each others’ faces for 20 minutes until someone who screams the loudest wins.

Speaking of design, the cards are also totally awesome and bone-worthy, as well.

In addition to Molly the Adventure Dog, we had a little golden retriever puppy with us, Cece.  She was damn ass balls cute.

As long as Molly was allowed to take Cece’s toys, the two of them got along just fine.

Anyways, after some fishing and swimming and screaming in each others’ faces, it was time to drink our faces off and eat our… faces off.  Usually when I go up to the cottage with my friends we have a very strict “meal-making” and “drink-making” protocol.  Everyone gets into pairs and makes one “fancy drink” for everyone, spaced out throughout the weekend, and everyone in those pairs is also tasked with making one meal.

Although this sounds like an air-tight plan, it usually culminates into a ridiculous competition where everyone tries to make their drink as BOOZY as possible in an effort to totally DESTROY everyone at the cottage.

This was the “Tequila Sangria”, and I’m pretty sure there’s a whole bottle of Patron in there.  BALLIN’ LARGE WHAT.

Similarly, the meal-cooking turns into this ridiculous competition where people try to out-do each other in an over-the-top, several-hour-long process of gourmet-meal preparation.  For example:

OH NO BIG DEAL:

These guys starting preparing their marinades and “rubs” at 11:00 am.  ELEVEN A.M. IN THE MORNING.  They made:

• Pork tenderloin with some delicious rub stuff on the outside – SO TENDER
• Chicken thighs with like rosemary and delicious sauce of some sort – ALSO VERY TENDER
• Flank steak with pepper and chimmi-churri sauce – THE MOST TENDER OF ALL
• Basmati rice
• Grilled rainbow vegetables

Like, serious ballin’.  VERY DELICIOUS.  Although it made my “eggs on a microwaved tortilla” meal from that morning seem somewhat lacking.

Anyways, then we put on some fireworks that I’ll show you tomorrow.  To tide you over, here are some ARTY PICTURES!

Also, here are some freak-moths.

Preface: In case you didn’t see in my last post, I went mental with the camera this weekend.  Prepare yourselves.

Since the wedding wasn’t due to start until around 3:00 pm, a crew of us decided to take a drive in the country and visit “Lake on the Mountain”, this lake that is on a mountain.

It sound mega-nerdly, but it was actually really weird to look one way and see a lake at ground level, then look another way and see a several hundred foot drop.  Then you start asking yourself all these questions like “How did the lake form?” “Is there a body of water that feeds it from BELOW???”  “Where did all the fish come from???”  SCIENCE!

So that took about five minutes then we decided to try and find this antiques store that we passed on the way in called “Dead People’s Stuff”, which sounded/looked awesome. 

We FOUND it!

Lots of cool stuff at actually REALLY good prices… but then I realized that I actually need no stuff right now.  Not even dead peoples’ stuff, which makes the stuff significantly cooler/more desirable.

So that took about five minutes and we were all like “LET’S GO DRINK!”.  So we found a patio on the “water” (read: swamp), and let our worries drown away in pints of cider.

Alright.  Enough of that.  Let’s get to the wedding.  T & A managed to find this AMAZING location that was a big old barn with a long back lawn, complete with a small covered outdoor tin-roofed wood structure with like, ivy growing all over it.  The ceremony took place in the tin-roofed thingie.  So simple and SO BEAUTIFUL.

FLARE!

 
Oh just some ADORABLE bunting here at the altar.

Alright, let’s cycle through some of my ONE MILLION pictures of the ceremony…

 
 HOLY MAKE ME CRY with your cuteness you two.

Alright, on to the reception, which was literally 50 feet up a beautiful lawn into a big old rustic barn.  But first champagne on the lawn in the beautiful weather.  Like, jesus crack-balls christ it was beautiful.

AND THEN THIS.

WHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

Here is the only picture of me.  I had these grand ambitions of putting my hair up in these complex and bohemian-esque braids, but then due to laziness/drunkenness/lack of mirror space in B&B bathroom, I decided to go “au naturel”… which in retrospect meant looking like a cocker-spaniel all night. I’m sure that the INTENSE SUN on my hair made it look a bit more freakishly frizzy than it actually was, but still.  NEVER AGAIN.

Thank god I liked my dress, which was this rust-colour that I am currently obsessed with.  RUST-COLOUR!!!!!  Best.

Oh, and introducing the drunkest people of the evening, preparing for their evening of extreme drunkenness. 

So, I got a little emotional and went up to Amanda on the dance floor and was all like “MEEEEEEEEEH AMANDA THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL (SOB) I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU (SOB), YOU LOOK SO BEAUTIFUL (SOB), HOW DID YOU PLAN ALL THIS FROM ENGLAND (SOB) HOW DID YOU FIND THIS AMAZING PLACE (SOB)?”

And her totally amazing answer was “I googled “Ontario Barn Wedding.”   Coolest, most laid-back bride ever.

Preface: WHO LIKES PICTURES?  Your response better have been “ME ME ME OH GOD JESUS ME” because I went a little nuts with my DSLR and took about 75 jillion pictures over this weekend.  In my mind, I was all like “I am doing the Bride a favour because she will have this wonderful “DSLR-quality” record of EVERY SINGLE DETAIL of her wedding weekend”, but in reality I just like to pretend I’m a photographer because it makes me feel like a big man.  Enjoy!

I went up/down/whatever to Picton this weekend to celebrate the wedding of one of my favourite people.  Amanda and her now hubby travelled to England on a whim a few years ago with no place to live, no job, and no real prospects and then everything worked out amazingly because they are spontaneous and awesome and way more adventurous than I.

A few years later they are thriving and lovin’ life in Europe while I ROT HERE IN DAMN CANADA.  Just kidding.  I love Canada.  But I am sad that I have literally only lived within a 3 hour-drive radius of my birthing hospital for my whole life.  Seems like a sad state of affairs compared to my worldly and adventurous friend.  But enough about me.

Since Amanda and Tyler are SMART and AWESOME and LOVELY, they were able to plan their whole wedding while overseas drinking in English Pubs and shopping at The Kooples.

It turned out amazing.

Day one they invited all the guests to a wine-tasting in Picton.  Little-known-fact that Picton, just outside of Kingston, has a pretty sweet-ass wine region complete with wine to go in my mouth-hole.  I booked a room at some resort-cum-cottage-cum-B-and-B place called The Waring House, which is just outside of “downtown” Picton.  Very picturesque, in a “Southern Ontario Backwoods Slash Farmlands” kind of way… but maybe they should replace their stained carpets and clean their stinky bathroom drain.  (…is that bitchy?)

Here is some corn:

Here I am in said corn:

Since there was about 3 hours before check-in time, the Receptionist recommended a walk behind the resort through the old railroad tracks.  Corn on one side, forest and stuff on the other side… AND BUGS EVERYWHERE.  Tank top was not a good idea.  Full-body mosquito netting with full-body rolling plastic ball protection would have been a good idea.  Here is an artist’s rendition:

Anyhoo, after seeing the country, it was time to head over to the first winery – called “Sandbanks Winery” after “Sandbanks Park” which is named after the “sandbanks” in the park.  Which are named because they are like “banks” of “sand”.

As previously mentioned, I took a lot of photos.  Click on the thumbnail if you want to see it all big-like.

Next stop was Karlo Estates.  Seriously, this place was gorgeous.  Like, I busted my nut over and over and over.  Also, the wine was really good, AND they gave us cheese and nuts and sausages and other delicious things to eat while we tasted the wine.  The chick who was doing the tasting was a *bit* (read: FUCKING VERY) long-winded… and I was all sitting there being like “SHUT THE F UP I JUST WANT TO DRINK THE DAMN WINE.”

Anyways, other than that, I LOVED Karlo Estates. Through this tasting I also discovered that, when you are not 17 and trying to get drunk off your parents’ old-person liquor, Port can be delicious.

HERE ARE A MILLION PICTURES.

Karlo Estates also had this mortar-less bridge that is basically held up with no mortar, hence the name “mortar-less bridge”.  It allowed people to pose on something while drunk (see below).

Anyhoo, I was pretty drunk at this point, but the trip wasn’t over yet… we swung over to Huff Winery to drink copious amounts of sparkling wine as the sun set.  BEST EVER.

End scene.

Tomorrow I’ll take you through the actual wedding which was TOTALLY BEAUTIFUL.  Seriously.  You should check back.