Oktoberfest!

For Americans, the comparison has to be Mardi Gras, but that comparison only relates to the craziness inside an Oktoberfest tent. 

 

We ventured to Munich on Tuesday morning to experience Oktoberfest for ourselves.  We took 2 trains to get there and before finding our way to the festival, we walked to Marionplatz, where the huge glockenspiel is.  Unfortunately it was undergoing big renovations, so we could not see the whole thing, but we got pictures nonetheless.

 

Afterwards, we hopped on the U-Bahn (underground railway) and headed to Oktoberfest.  When we got to the fairgrounds, we were blown away.  None of us realized that Oktoberfest isn’t just a bunch of beer tents serving beer and food, but an enormous fair with rides, vendor tents and everything else you can imagine.  It may even rival Disney World in size!  OK, maybe not Disney, but pretty darn close.  We weren’t really sure where to begin!  But, we had come to drink beer, so we headed for a tent.

 

The first tent was the Hacker-Pschorr Brewery and was (we would later find out) very calm and even a bit empty.  We weren’t really sure how it all worked – whether we had to buy a ticket to get a beer or if we were allowed to just sit.  Turned out the latter was the case, since reservations were typically for 4PM on.  Before that, tables were fair game.  After we sat, a very friendly fraulien came over and took our order, which was easy because everyone just orders beer.  No choice in size, because everyone gets a liter beer stein, and no choice in type, because you get the kind of beer that they serve in that tent.  We all ate some cheese pretzels and downed our first liters of Oktoberfest beer and then decided to move on.

 

The next tent we went to was the Hofbrau Festzelt Brewery and it was much more fun.  It was a much younger crowd and the band had the crowd singing and standing on the tables.  Germans and Austrians really love American music, and at one point the entire tent was all singing “Hey Baby” together.  We got video of it and will try and put it on the blog here soon because it is worth watching.  We had one beer here and then moved on.

 

We heard that the AugustinerBrau tent next because we were told at the previous tent that theirs and the Augustiner tents were the best tents at all of Oktoberfest.  So, we figured (after already having 2 liters of beer in us) why not see?  So we did.  We ended up finding a seat smack dab in the middle of the tent with 4 Americans from Chicago.  They were very much the fraternity type and had been travelling all over Europe with Oktoberfest as one of their main destinations.  We of course, had another beer each.

 

Need I go on?  I mean, really, by this point, Oktoberfest had become our craziest festival yet and we’ve now been there and done that!  Suffice it to say that we went, we saw, and well, we made it back to our hotel together and with all our belongings.  If you can experience Oktoberfest for yourself, we highly recommend it.  But if you do, stick to one, MAYBE two tents and eats LOTS of food beforehand.

 

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