Munich at its very best!

You've got to love Munich at Oktoberfest time. There's a certain naughtiness in the air, that you don't really see in the Bavarian capital for the rest of the year. For the three week duration most locals are either drunk or recovering from being drunk. AND they are even chatty with the out-of-towners for once. But all the fun comes at a price. The trains fill up with vomit pretty quickly... normally, we only see that sort of thing in Berlin (Horrible, dirty place!)

In fact it's amazing, what with all the general destruction that occurs in Munich every year, that the locals are even still talking to Oktoberfest tourists like me. Sure, they do try to block the touries from their "exclusive" Munich club scene on weekends. But the problem is, if you dress in a good enough pair of lederhosen - then they can't tell if you are from out of town.

I suppose as long as the punters are paying for their drinks then the average Munich club owner doesn't really care - the city is known for being the place where the dollar (or Euro) rules supreme. And, someone must be flashing their cash around - check out the bad boy drink prices here at Club Paradiso (yes, that is really what the place is called).

I'll have the Goose Vodka for 240 Euro thanks!

Berlin Party parties

Results are in. Berlin has voted for it's local parliament. Just so euro of course made a brief appearance in the capital to experience it all first hand. In case you had your head in the sand for the last 48 hours: Wowi won, Angie's party (the CDU) experienced small gains and the FDP officially confirmed their total lack of popularity.

But who cares about the big boys? We pretty much knew all of that stuff before the election. What about all the other stuff going on during the election weekend? Take these guys on the left for instance. This is "The Party". They didn't get really that many votes in Sunday's elections, but they hosted a wicked S-Bahn party on Friday night in the S75. And, they dress pretty sharp. Any male German politician that can wear a decent suit is bringing pretty good credentials to the job, I reckon.

I think it's fair to say that Klaus Wowereit's party won't be searching to form a coalition with "The Party". Who Wowi picks as his sidekick remains to be seen at time of printing in fact.

But just in case - what are the policies of The Party?
- banning pub crawls city wide
- introduction of a Berlin fashion wall, the longest catwalk in the world, and
- using Prenzlauer Berg as a storage area for nuclear waste.

Land Ahoy

The big winner from the elections however was the little-known Pirate Party, who picked up nearly 9% votes despite campaigning for the first time in Berlin. Their platform of free speech and transparent politics does sound attractive to Joe Public, but the group admits that they still have a lot of learning to do. As yet they are uncertain who will be the party leader in the Berlin parliament for instance. They seem certain that they don't want to get involved in piracy on the high seas, for now at least.

Party heavies believe that the surge in popularity for the Pirates is due to a lack of any other decent political alternatives. I'm not sure though. This impressionable young Berliner on the right said he voted for them because he "liked the name".