Interrail day 21 & 22 - Lüneburg

Lüneburg is a town situated close to Hamburg, home to about 79,000 people according to a census from December 2022. My high school friend Yanniels is studying there this year, so I went to pay him a visit while I was in the area :)

I got on the night train from Vienna to Hamburg on the Friday night at 19.35. The timing was probably not the best, the train was absolutely packed, probably with a lot of people leaving for the weekend.

I really felt the 13 hour train ride pass. I was seated in a 6 person compartment, with six people, so my long legs could barely fit! 🫠

The train got to Hamburg fairly on time (amazingly) and I got another 15 minutes train to Lüneburg, then the bus to Yanniels's place.

We were both very tired in the morning, me from because of the train journey, and him because of an Oktoberfest night.

We still went to play volleyball on the court right next to his flat, had a good time and met some locals playing there too. We did a game together after they had already played 2.5 hours so we were all tired!

After a quick shower and lunch, we went down for a nap. It was only supposed to be 30-40 mins but I slightly overlept, and ended up sleeping a bit over an hour.

In the afternoon we walked into the town center to visit a bit and run some errands. When we got back home, we had dinner and went down for another nap - only 20 minutes this time - and went out to enjoy the Oktoberfest festivities.

When we got there there seemed to be a power issue so half the fair was dark, it looked kind of gloomy. Shortly after, some of Yanniels's new Erasmus friends arrived and we queued up to get into the main tent, where all the real fun was happening.

Inside the tent were a lot of people, all standing on benches around tables, dancing to the live music. There was a lot of beer going around.

The music in the tent stopped at 1am, and we started heading home right after. We had a 35 minutes walk, along with some other people so it didn't feel too long.

The next day, we slept through the morning, then went out to meet others by the lake of Lüneburg for a swim.

I took the train in the evening to go to Hamburg to see my cousin Judith. The train journey went well - not much that coud've gone wrong if I'm honest - but I somehow got in the wrong tram and ended up taking much longer navigating inside Hamburg than to it.