Greetings from France!

Chris and I are now in a small town in France outside
of Geneva, staying with my cousin Thaddeus.

We attended Oktoberfest proper on Saturday and found
it to be completely overrun, at times the fairgrounds
where it is held felt like Bourbon Street during Mardi
Gras in New Orleans, with veritable streams of people
shoulder to shoulder flowing down the avenue between
the enormous beer halls. Unfortunately, by the time we
arrived (about 6:00 p.m.) all of the beer halls were
at capacity and not allowing anyone else in, so we had
to make do with the exterior tables. Even there, it
was difficult to find a seat and one cannot get served
without one. After squeezing onto a bench with total
strangers, the service was still incredibly slow, on
average taking about an hour to get a beer.
Thankfully, once you finally did get served, the beer
came in a one liter heavy glass mug. It was amusing to
see and talk with the cross-section of people there,
everyone from 16 to 80 years old, even little old
ladies hoisting these enormous beer mugs, perhaps
chatting away with some thug who looked like a german
version of a Hell's Angel. We hung out with a group of
Italians who happened to be staying in our same
campsite, returning with them to the campground to
find the party still going on. At the campsite, one
could purchase Lowenbrau in half liter bottles from a
vending machine, which we found rather surprising.
Incidentally, the Lowenbrau that one gets in the
States is a travesty and bears little or no
resemblance to that found in Munich, which is actually
a quite serviceable brew.

On Sunday we caught a train for Geneva, where my
cousin picked us up at the train station and brought
us to his home in France. The three of us climbed a
mountain (Roc D'Enfer, or Rock of Hell in English) on
Monday, a rather more challenging than expected climb
to a jagged 2244 meter peak in the French Alps.
Tuesday we spent tooling around Geneva, visiting the
Parks, Botanical Gardens, and Spanish Quarter as well
as checking out Septieme Etage, the New York designer
clothing boutique that Thad and his girlfriend
Katerina have opened in the ritziest part of Geneva.
Their location is ideal, just on the edge of Old Town
in the main shopping district, which is flooded with
well-monied locals and tourists. Today we're just
chilling out at their hillside chalet here in France,
contemplating our next move, most likely either
further into France or perhaps a beeline to Portugal
before working our way back across the Mediterranean
to Greece.

Than Putzig
Chris Tarr