Oktoberfest 2013....What a weekend

Oktoberfest was quite the experience, hard to express the chaotic nature of the whole thing unless you attend yourself. But here I go....

We left on a train from Copenhagen at 7:30 AM on Friday morning on a long journey to the coveted city of Munich, Germany. Crossing from Denmark to Germany, the train had to detach from the rail and be taken by a ferry over the sea in a 45 min period. The ferry was more like a cruise ship, with restaurants and a duty-free shop. We bought a wine box for the duration of the train ride. I guess we started a little early haha.

After about 12 hours, we finally arrived in Munich a little after 7pm. We headed to our campground, Weisn Camp, about a 20 min metro ride from the central station. They had a bar at the campground that we spent the night at. 

Funny Story: We started talking to a guy and a group of girls sitting behind us. They came over an joined us at one point. The guy told us that he is Australian but works at a restaurant called "Bellushi's" in London. And Anton and I looked at each other and said that sounds familiar. It is a restaurant chain that happened to be in our hostel in London we stayed at in July. Then we asked him, "which one?" He said, "in Hammersmith!" We were like, "that's where we stayed!" And then I looked at his girlfriend sitting next to him, and it was the women that had checked us in at the hotel and had helped us with everything during our trip. What a small world. The guy apparently had made our burgers one day when we were there. So weird. 

The next morning we woke up at 6 AM, ready for the big day. We arrived at the festival at around 8 AM to get in line. Weirdly enough, the guys standing in front of me in line were from UC Davis as well. 

It took us a while to get into Hofbrauhaus, but when we did, I couldn't believe my eyes.....

I have never seen anything like it.... Then the shenanigans began...

Also, if you get up and stand on one of the table in the middle of tent, you have to chug your entire liter mug, or else food will be thrown from all directions at you. It was pretty fun to watch. 

That is me standing to the left with the blue collard shirt

We had to take a break in the afternoon; we took a nap on this hill

Then we returned to a new tent at around 7pm. We ended up getting a table and hanging out with some Dutch guys for the rest of the night. 

The next day we decided to sleep in a little bit, til 730 AM. Before drinking, we took time to walk around the entire festival (which is almost impossible because it is the largest festival you will ever see). We even did the roller coaster which was awesome; wish I had a picture of the view from the top. 

Awesome salmon sandwich

Then it was time to enter the tents again...

All three of us were forced to chug our beers on the table. We did, but had some spillage. Sam did the best

It was quite the weekend, what can I say. We left Munich on a train at 12 AM and didn't get back to Copenhagen until 2:30 PM the next day. It was a long night, and I had class at 3 PM I had to go to....

BUT IT WAS ALL WORTH IT.....OKTOBERFEST 2013, never forget 

While unpaid, Internships can have perks

Unexpectedly, I recently obtained an internship at a Fantasy Soccer Start-up company here in Copenhagen. The company is called Ultimate Manager, which is run under the help of a start-up boosting company known as Rainmaking. While fantasy soccer is increasing in popularity in Europe, it has yet to become very popular in the US, but has the potential to be. Therefore, I was hired as a research intern to find out if it is economically feasible to expand their unique fantasy soccer platform to the US. It has been a great job so far; I love my coworkers, the office is beautiful, and the free gourmet lunch is incredible. Furthermore, my boss and one of our coworkers loves to play golf, so when they found out that I played back in America they wanted to take me out and see how good I was. Three days after I was hired my boss, Morten, another coworker, Gummi, and I took a day trip to Sweden to play some golf at a beautiful course. It was about an hour drive to the course, called Barseback Golf and Country Club, in Loddekopinge, Sweden. For those of you who watch golf, the 2003 Solheim Cup was actually held at this course.

Definitely a great way to learn from some successful business men. 

It was an awesome Thursday; I couldn't have asked for much more. We have since gone out to play two more times, with more rounds to come. 

Kopenhagen Fur

While it might sound strange, my "Economics of the Food Industry" class took a field trip to what many people in American would consider a very controversial place: the largest fur company in Europe known as Kopenhagen Fur. We took taxis from campus to about 20 km outside the city to Kopenhagen Fur's auction house/handling and distribution facility. If you were wondering, I am not spelling "Kopenhagen" incorrectly; spelling the name with a "K" is their stylistic feature.

The entrance to the building resembled that of a 4 or 5 star hotel; meant to impress the handful of wealthy auctioneers. The vast majority of them are from Hong Kong and China. We were given these official name tags when we walked through the doors.

                                              

Soon after, we were led into the auction room, which proved to be quite astounding once I found out the quantity of money that was being spent about every 5 seconds.

Each lot ranged from 1000-4000 furs, which were each going anywhere from $100-250. If you do the math, each lot was ranging from $100,000 to $1,000,000. And like I said, auctioneers were spending this amount of money every few seconds. Incredible. 

There are 5 auctions that occur at this facility a year, and each auction sells around 4-6 million furs. Kopenhagen Fur's revenue came out to be about $2 billion last year. 

Our guide gave us a presentation that for one sparked my interest in business in general, as well as cleared up the negative stigma that lies behind the fur industry. It really is not as harmful as most people believe it to be. 

Then we took a tour of the viewing area of the furs, as well as the area where they would usually be processed and graded. 

 By the way, chinchilla fur is by far the most soft. Mink fur is the most popular though.

After the tour had concluded, we had the chance to eat in the most amazing cafeteria I have ever seen. Any type of food you could ever imagine (all danish at heart though). They even had beer and wine dispensers, all for free. But when you think about it, most of the people eating in the cafeteria had already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars already that day. So I guess you could say they deserve a free gourmet meal. 

The lamb dish was incredible 

Read my other blog...erikadcock.blogspot.com

Hey, for those of you who do not know, I spent the last week in Croatia, and I will be blogging about it on my Europe 2013 blog called erikadcock.blogspot.com. So check it out!