The travels of Tim and Megan: September 2010

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Oktoberfest 2010 - Munich, Germany - Part 2

Sunday (continued)

Even by early afternoon, the Lowenbrau beer tent was going off. There were loads of people dancing on tables, there were two guys dressed as 1980s wrestlers Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior who had a fake wrestling match right next to our table, there was a rather excitable woman who cackled like a witch but who burped like Barney from The Simpsons and managed to get the entire beer tent chanting "We will rock you" and there was a woman who must have been in her 60s down the end of our table who stood up and skulled half a stein before leaving with the rest of her family. It was seriously awesome.

After the first stein it was plain sailing and we were away again. We happened to have a family from Sweden sitting next to us at our table and we were super impressed at how much fun they were having. The dad was all decked out in proper lederhosen and the mum joined in the skulling of steins too. Amazing. There was also plenty of opportunity to buy crazy hats and accessories in the beer tents. Jono bought a lovely green wizard hat and Kate went for the more sophisticated red hat you will see in the photos below. Kristen had her hair plaited by the hair-plaiting lady and we nearly bought Megan a Lowenbrau lion hat while she was at the toilets - luckily we didn't, as she thought it looked like roadkill.

We were told that we had to leave by 5pm, as a whole new crowd had reserved tables from 5pm onwards for the evening session. We were just finishing off our beers when suddenly the security crew were brought in to evict us (at about 4.55pm). The Swedes were just as confused as we were. The tough-looking security crew all had black berets on their heads, except one who had a red beret. Megan and Tim started belting out "Raspberry Beret", but after a few lines, it was evident that he was not amused, so we stopped and moved along. It took us a while to get out of the Lowenbrau beer tent, as we kept stopping to chat to merry strangers. Everyone was so friendly.

Back outside we decided to have a go on some rides. We thought the dodgems were a good safe place to start and they were a lot of fun! Only Jono was brave enough to get on the roller coaster with a few steins of beer rolling around in his belly. Tim discovered a really fun game, where you got given a few green rubber frogs and you had to place them on a tray one at a time and then whack the lever with a hammer so that the frogs were catapulted towards the big pond in the centre. If your frog landed in one of the moving lily-pad bowls in the pond, then you won a prize. Tim got a frog into a bowl and won a very tacky red love heart, that Megan is so proudly showing off in the photo below. Later in the night Kristen gave it away to some young German lad! Kate and Jono also got a frog in the bowl and they won a small "Scrappy Doo" dog with aggressive teeth. Jono was more intent on swinging his catapult around and aiming his frogs across to the side, where the rest of us were watching from. Hours of fun.

Next we moved on to the action-packed ferris wheel. We were told off in the queue because Jono's dog was barking too much at the people in front of us. The ferris wheel was value for money - we must have gone around at least five times. Woah! There were spectacular views of the Oktoberfest grounds all lit up beautifully (see below). Jono and Tim were talked out of riding on the log flume, as apparently we would have got soaked and this would have been a bad thing.

Our last stop of the day was at the Schottenhamel beer tent. We just tried our luck in case there was any room, but it looked to be bursting at the seams. However, we managed to find a very small space at the end of someone's table where we could just squeeze in. Within half an hour the rest of the people at the table left for the night (locals who had work the next morning!) so we had the whole table to ourselves. We ordered some roasted half chickens to go with our steins and we devoured these like wild animals. Delicious.

There was plenty of dancing on tables going on in the Schottenhamel tent and we even learned a new Bavarian beer drinking song. We are not sure what it is called but it has some pretty cool actions and a lot of "La la la la la". If you ask nicely, we might teach it to you one day. We lost Jono temporarily - he wandered off to the toilets and couldn't find his way back. But he eventually showed up about an hour later, having acquired a lovely pink scarf. Sunday was just a perfect day - we all had so much fun, met some brilliant people, drank a lot of beer and ate some awesome food. It is quite possibly on the short list for the greatest day ever.

Monday

Two days of beer festival is never enough, so luckily we had arranged to stay for the Monday too. We had actually reserved a table for the day at the Hofbrau beer tent. We met near the Oktoberfest grounds and we were all in better shape than we had been on the Sunday morning. We had originally expected to have eight people in our tour party, so reserving the table, which holds 10 people, was a great idea. In the end a few people pulled out and we were left with five soldiers, which meant that we had plenty of vouchers for food and drink to get through! We had vouchers for 20 steins of beer, 10 half chickens and €75 worth of vouchers to spend on any food and drink of our choice...for five people!

The Hofbrau tent was great - it was decorated with quite a lot of greenery and a massive inflatable beer angel hanging from the roof in the centre. The band was in fine form once again. There were a lot of salespeople wandering around the tent again. Kristen joined the hat brigade with a dashing Michael Jackson Billie Jean style hat - which prompted some awesome moonwalking from Jono. We also each bought a beer mug (with a photo of us copied on the side of it) from a young lady who claimed she was an astro-physicist! We declined to buy a gherkin from the gherkin salesman (photo below). Aside from not liking gherkins, the wise words of "Never trust a man with a pony" were ringing in our heads!

We managed to get through all 20 steins and about 7-8 of the roasted half-chickens and Tim craftily sold some of the food and drink vouchers to a couple of drunken Kiwi girls (from Christchurch) we met. They got a good deal and we got some cash for something that was fast becoming worthless to us. Once again we met loads of really nice people from all over the world, including an Irish guy who had spotted Tim's Thundercats T-shirt and just had to show us his mobile with the Thundercats theme song as his ring tone. Very nice.

We had to leave the beer tent around 5pm to ensure that we had enough time to get back to our hotels to collect our luggage and then get out to the airport for our 9.15pm flight. This perhaps did not go as smoothly as it could have. Having destroyed 20 steins in five hours, we were a little on the drunken side. Jono had gone missing again, so Kate stayed at the beer tent looking for him. Meanwhile, Tim was easily distracted on the way out of the festival grounds - stopping to buy some hot roasted nuts, chasing after a guy who ran past us to see where he was running, and starring in a Korean's man home video by dancing a merry jig.

We managed to get to the airport on time, however, Jono and Kate missed the flight and caught a later flight back to London. Aside from that slight hiccup, we all had an amazing weekend. Any blog fans with an opportunity to visit Oktoberfest in the future, do it. It is just the best fun you will ever have.

Very nice

Megs and
Swedish
girl

Jono and
Tim

Thirsty
Lowenbrau
lion

Fun in the
dodgems

Wheat
beer and
hot chips

Tim hitting
frog catapults

And Megs
with the
prize

So many
rides!!

View of
Okto-
berfest
grounds
from
ferris
wheel

Schotten-

hamel tent

Jono with his
new pink scarf

One of

the roller

coasters

The happiest
place in the

world

Jono and
Kate -

awesome
lederhosen

Beer and
Bear

First stein
of the day

The astro-
physicist
beer mug
seller

The
crew

Hofbrau
tent

The pony
gherkin
salesman

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Oktoberfest 2010 - Munich, Germany - Part 1

Saturday

As 2010 marks our fourth year in Europe, we decided it was about time we visited the most fantastic festival in the world - Oktoberfest! Oktoberfest is a world famous beer festival, which runs for 16-18 days every year in the Bavarian city of Munich, Germany, running from late September to the first weekend in October. It is the world's largest fair, with some 6.5 million people attending every year. This year was an extra special celebration, as it was the 200th anniversary of the original Oktoberfest.

The Oktoberfest tradition started in 1810 to celebrate the marriage of Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig to the Saxon-Hildburghausen Princess Therese on 12 October. The citizens of Munich were invited to join in the festivities which were held over five days on the fields in front of the city gates. The main event of the original Oktoberfest was a horse race. Anniversary celebrations were held annually thereafter that eventually became larger and more elaborate. In 1818, a carousel and two swings were set up for the revellers. By the 1870s, mechanical rides were an expanding feature of the festival and in 1908, the festival boasted Germany's first roller coaster. When the city began allowing beer on the fairgrounds, makeshift beer stands began cropping up, and their number increased steadily until they were eventually replaced by beer halls in 1896. The beer halls, like the beer tents of today, were sponsored by the local breweries.

Visitors consume large quantities of food, most of which consists of traditional hearty fare. Readily available all over the fairgrounds are chickens grilled on a spit and typically sold in halves. Other popular dishes include grilled pork knuckles (possibly the finest food in the world), steamed white veal sausages, potato dumplings, sauerkraut, pretzels and charcoal-fired fish-on-a-stick (Steckerlfisch). Each year around 7 million litres of beer, 85,000 litres of wine, 548,000 chickens and 59,000 pork knuckles are consumed at the Oktoberfest grounds. There are 14 massive beer tents in the festival grounds, seating in total over 100,000 people (more than 7,000 each on average)!

Kristen, Megan and Tim were up super early on Saturday to fly to Munich, where we met up with Kate and Jono, who had arrived the previous night. The five of us grabbed some lunch at a huge pub in the centre of Munich. It was very cold on Saturday, so hot soup, warm apple strudel and pork were all excellent choices. We also had our first beer (of many) over lunch!

We spent the afternoon wandering around the city, checking out the main square (Marienplatz) and a large outdoor market. We were amazed at how many people were dressed up to celebrate Oktoberfest. Most local men were wearing the traditional lederhosen (leather shorts with braces) and many of the Bavarian women wore the traditional drindl costume. Oktoberfest is a hugely important festival in Bavarian culture. We decided that hats would be a good way to join the fun and on the way to the Hofbrau beer hall, Tim purchased a dashing grey hat, complete with an Oktoberfest beer mug and flashing fibre-optics on the side, as you will see below. Very nice.

We figured that the Oktoberfest grounds would be far too busy for us to join in the late afternoon on a Saturday, so we opted instead for the Hofbrau beer hall in the city, one of many permanent beer halls in Munich. It was also packed to the rafters and there was a massive scrum of people outside waiting to get in. They had a barricade and about 6-8 bouncers, letting small groups of people in at a time. We waited for around 20-30 minutes before we were allowed in and, even then, it was a mission to find a seat! But we finally settled in and got our hands on some huge 1-litre glass steins of Hofbrau. Delicious.

The beer hall must have held a couple of thousand people. The Bavarian oompah band made for a great atmosphere - they played all sorts of music, but they would play the popular Bavarian drinking song "Ein Prosit" every 10 minutes or so, at which point most people in the beer hall would jump up on their benches and swing their steins wildly from side to side, doing their best to sing along, and then clunk them together with everyone else at their table. The clunking of the steins is supposed to be done very hard - the glass is thick and usually doesn't break!!

German beer, whilst delicious and very easy to drink, is also rather strong, up around the 6% mark, and after a few hours of merriment in the beer hall, we were pretty boozed, some of us more than others. We were being served by a German waiter who looked a lot like Paul McCartney (see photo below). Tim informed him of this and he was not pleased. He said he did not like being compared to an Englishman!

It was decided that food was a fine idea. Tim tried a pork knuckle and it was amazing - a big, meaty drumstick of pork...very tricky to eat with a knife and fork - it just spins around wildly on the plate. Best to pick it up in your hands and go nuts on it. By this stage Jono was a little under the weather and his stein had been confiscated. This did not stop him from swinging an imaginary stein about every time the band played "Ein Prosit".

Megan very wisely ejected Tim from the game at around 11.30pm (after six hours in the beer hall) and the two of us staggered back to our hotel in the rain. The rest of the gang carried on and then went for more punishment in Kate and Jono's hotel bar, eventually calling it a night around 2am. Animal! Kristen took over an hour to get home to her hotel, as she couldn't remember the name or location of her hotel and the German taxi drivers had trouble understanding her words.

Sunday

The plan had been to meet at the Oktoberfest grounds fairly early on Sunday - maybe around 9am. When Tim woke up at 9.30am, still fully clothed on top of the bed and wondering why we were no longer in the beer hall, the plans had to be changed slightly. All five of us were feeling extremely rough. Megan and Tim had a delicious and much needed breakfast in the hotel and then met up with Kristen and arrived at Oktoberfest around 11.30am. Kate and Jono joined us a few hours later! We had a lot of fun piecing the previous evening together and sharing hilarious stories.

We had not realised how huge the Oktoberfest grounds were - there were literally hundreds of different amusement park rides and games, as well as the hundreds of food stalls and the 14 enormous beer tents. We walked around for an hour or more checking out the rides and stalls, but our stomachs refused to let us partake in any of the action! Then we popped our head inside a few of the beer tents and gradually warmed to the idea of hopping back on the horse. We were particularly impressed with the Hippodrom! The tents are all enormous and, of course, they were all packed to the rafters. Even at 12.30ish there were crazily drunk people doing insane things. After snacking on some roasted nuts and other deliciousness, we were ready to fight our way through that rough first stein. We found a spot in the Lowenbrau tent and settled in for an afternoon of shenanigans...

To be continued