Finally made it out to IKEA today to pick up a few necessities - a better pillow (more appropriately, an actual pillow), a desk lamp, and I had intended to get some better curtains (again, I think perhaps “actual” works better here instead of “better,” since what attempts to cover my window could hardly be considered a curtain) before deciding that I didn’t want to deal with the hassle. Exciting, I know, but actually the IKEA itself was pretty impressive, a veritable hodgepodge of every home decoration and necessity you can think of crammed into a massive building that puts the Super WalMarts to absolute shame. I don’t think you can walk out of WalMart with a stack of plywood and a 5′x8′ framed map of the world.

My Irish friends dutifully informed me of the upcoming “Arthur Guinness Day,” celebrating the life and legacy of the man who gave us Guinness beer this very Thursday, 24 September. This amounts to something of a national holiday for my Irish cohorts, and they’ve been talking about it every day for the past week as though it were Christmas or the Irish equivalent of Thanksgiving (actually that works pretty well).

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, depends) for me I’m committed to saving my energy for Munich on Friday. I believe I wrote about this before, but I’ll mention once more that this Friday I’m headed off to Munich for the famed Oktoberfest. The Germans, and probably Europeans in general, have really perfected the art of cheap travel; we’re traveling by way of “Mitfahr,” roughly translating quite simply to “drive with.” I’m sure the same option exists in the U.S. too, but here many people are quite dedicated to it; you simply post a listing if you’re going somewhere and have extra seats in your car, and people call you and offer to go with you in exchange for a little bit of money. My flatmate Sofía and I are driving 6 or 7 hours with someone who posted on the site for €30, a much better alternative to the €110 (minimum, at this point) to get a train. Not a bad deal.

Of course I’ll take my camera with me and write about the festival and post pictures when I get back. For the moment I have very little to write about; not much changes in the course of a regular class week and I haven’t found anything particularly amazing or perplexing to write about. Check back on Sunday or Monday for a full account of Oktoberfest.