My second international trip brought me to my third country: Germany.

I'll never forget this trip for so many reasons. From almost breaking out in nervous tears at the Minneapolis airport as my brother dropped me off to head out on my own on this all expenses paid fellowship from the Radio Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) to running into a room late, while still tying my tie, for a meeting with former chancellor Helmut Kohl, I certainly have some interesting stories to tell.

But, the story that I'd like to tell here is one that you expect of me while in Germany. Yes, this story is about beer.

During our fellowship, which is to help foster grassroots relations betwen the two countries, we traveled through many different German cities, and Strasbourg, France, to learn about politics, media and the culture.

Well, it just so happened that my trip, with several other journalists throughout the United States, coincided with Oktoberfest in Munich. So, thankfully for me, it was put on our itinerary to visit Munich at this time, attend the opening Oktoberfest parade, and visit the festival for a night.

Everything started out innocent enough with us walking to the parade from our hotel...that is until we saw one of the floats, packed with several beautiful German women holding beer steins I should say, approaching us enroute to the parade.

They started waving at us to come up and get a drink as they drove by, which I later found out to be a totally acceptable practice, even during the parade, for parade goers to do. But, not knowing this at the time, it was something quite new and different for me.

I'm not quite sure what came over me at this time, but I just sprinted out into the street and started drinking out of a few of the liter mugs.

I had beer all down my chest and was absolutely soaked in the stuff. And no, for the record, I'm not complaining one bit.

But still, I was sitting at the parade quite wet, although thoroughly enjoying myself. All in all it was a good time, but the best was yet to come the next day when we actually went to Oktoberfest.
We had a table reserved for us at the legendary Hobrau Haus tent. But, in truth, it wouldn't have much mattered since we didn't spend a lot of time there.

No sooner did we get there, eat a giant pretzel and some other grub, along with a beer, than all of us that were under 30-years-old hit the floor of the tent and started partying with everyone else.

Well, several liters later, we started to get quite interesting and not really paying attention to everything that was going on around us. And as we made our way through the crowd to go somewhere else, where I don't recall, one lady in our group got separated from us by a group of men.

I'm not sure how much I had to drink at this point, or what happened to me again, but I walked right into the middle of the group by shoving a couple of guys out of the way, picked this woman up and threw here over the shoulder.

Here I made the dramatic pause as I slowly turned, or at least it seemed it was slow, and looked at all of them before I pounded myself on the chest with my free arm saying, "MINE!"

Now, I know she wasn't mine, but at the time I had the hots for this cute little reporter and was happy to lay my claim over these guys and be her knight in shining armor...although it unfortunately didn't finish out that way that night.

But, that's neither here nor there.

I slowly moved out of this group of guys and carried my colleague to safety.

Unfortunately the same couldn't be said for the others in the group since one of the guys had a few too many liters and ending up throwing up right outside the door to the tent. The poor guy, as sick as he was, also threw up outside the taxi cab window as the driver took us back to our hotel.

And my only real regret to this is that digital cameras just weren't too available yet, otherwise I'm sure I would've had a great photo of him doing this. I know it turned out on film ok, but alas I can't share it here...although that probably is for the best.

The particularly funny kicker to all of this is that the next morning, in one of our professional meetings, you could tell which ones of us were the irresponsible ones out all night the night before. We even ended up getting a nice little remark from the local politician we were visiting with that day.

But, on only three hours of sleep, and with six liters in my sysem, I couldn't care much of what he was saying, or about grassroots relations. I just wanted a nap.