The travels of Tim and Megan: Oktoberfest 2010 - Munich, Germany

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