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

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.