I had written a long post about Oktoberfest but my draft has gone kaput! It was very long and self indulgent so I’ll recap the hopefully more interesting bits.
We had breakfast at our terrible hotel which has grown on us but the food was good, and luckily, we sat next to 2 Australians from Sydney – Johnny & Lena. Super nice people and they asked if we wanted to go to Oktoberfest with them and their friends… Hell yes!
We walked over, meeting up with the others – Mel, Dale and Leigh. All very nice and dressed in the outfits that we wish we had by now. Arriving at the gates, we had the obligatory photo infront of the big sign and in we went. The Hoffbrau tent was the choice and we were seated with a probably 10% full crowd. Not bad at 10am! By 12, it was packed.
Order given, 1L steins delivered and it was on! The others were seasoned professionals being they went the previous day and made sure they told us the finer points about drinking – such as take it slow, it’s a marathon session, not a sprint. Something some of the other knobs around us could have done with hearing. Over the course of the day, we saw a number of people kicked out by big German security guards just itching for you to resist. Some did, and probably wished they hadn’t.
The beer tasted great, even that early in the morning. As the beer went down, our interest in other tables around us grew. We would have talked to 50+ people during the day – people from Canada (Serena & Ali + 2 others), the US (Kurt, Louis and another guy), Darwin (Pete) and a truckload of locals & other Australians. We had a huge amount of fun with 2 in particular – Matius & Julian – 2 young guys from a town about an hour from Munich. They put up with our effort at sprechen zie deutch, translated when we needed it and explained a heap of stuff. In return, we helped them with the ladies who for some reason loved our table. There’s some good stories from the day/night, but can’t really put them up here, even if it’s nothing to do with us directly.
We stayed until 10pm and by then, the seats were for standing only and the only talking done was singing along to whatever the band played.
Seriously, it was one of our most fun days we’ve ever had. If you ever get an opportunity to go, take it! Its like nothing I’ve seen or experienced before. Everyone is so friendly and there for a good time. Maybe next year…
