Oktoberfest 15-18 Sept

It’s not often that you go to a festival that not only meets your expectations but completely blows them out of the water; especially one like Munich’s massive, hugely popular, commercial, 10,000 seater tented celebration of Bavarian culture. Is it over rated? You wonder. But then you arrive….and realize that no! The Oktoberfest is hugely popular for a reason – it’s just one of the most amazing, incredible festivals one is ever likely to go to!! Even if you don’t like drinking your beers by the litre from a stein, that, when full, is destined to give you a solid bicep workout. What a WICKED time we had. We are all now in major depression that we are back in London and not in the Hofbrau House singing ‘Ambrosie’ with thousands of others having a bloody good time.

Gabriela, Lea and I flew into Freidrichshafen on Friday night, one of Ryanair’s lovely small, random and very much out of the way airports, with a bunch of other Aussies and Kiwi’s who were also making their way to the festival. I was lucky I made it – remind me next time it’s a good idea to take my passport if I want to fly abroad! Trying to cross London in Friday afternoon rush hour to get home to pick up forgotten passport made for a very stressful few hours. Anyway, we picked up our hire car and began the 220km drive to Munich around 10pm, camping that night in a random village park type place, with houses backing onto it and cars driving past! Did our best to hide my bright yellow tent between a big tree and a hedge!

So we arrived in Munich pretty early on the first Saturday of the festival, and pitched our tent in the legendary Thalkirchin campgrounds. Despite being only 8am it was pretty difficult to find a spot of grass; the place was pumping! Loads of Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans, most of whom were already drinking! Awesome atmosphere. We headed into the festival around 10am, and just couldn’t believe how many people there were!
Lea and I getting into the spirit!

Or what the actual festival looked like. I’d been imagining a big park, with marquees erected here and there – kind of like the Schutzenfest in Adelaide. But this was far, far bigger than I ever expected. The beer tents were more like massive halls, some seating up to 10,000 people, and each of them decorated on the inside in their own unique way. The roof of one was painted sky blue and had puffy clouds hanging from it!
The Hacker Tent

There were 14 of these tents lining a huge bitumen walkway, like the main artery of the festival, running down the center from one end to another. And then all around them were rides and side shows and pretzel stand after German hot dog stand after pretzel stand. Kind of like the Royal Show only much much bigger. Oh yeah and nougat and curried nuts and chocolate coated fruit kebabs and squillions of gingerbread hearts you hung round your necks, yum!!!! And by 10am it was literally impossible to get a seat in any of the halls – which was kind of a problem as they only serve you beer if you are sitting down! It was awesome walking through and seeing everyone dressed up – all the Germans, and there were thousands upon thousands of them – were wearing the traditional Bavarian dress, which was fantastic to see.
Love the outfits

Eventually we managed to find a seat at the end of one table, which we shared with 4 older Germans, in time for the big parade that lead up to the ‘tapping of the keg’ that officially kicked off proceedings at 12pm. Fireworks over head and it was game on!! Woohoo! The big, strapping German bar maids then started doing the rounds, each carrying around 6 or 7 steins of beer in each hand out to the tables. Unbelievable!!
The steins arrive!
When at the Oktoberfest...

And it was just the best fun. Inside each tent were rows upon rows of long, wooden tables, and each tent had it’s own brass band which played traditional Germon folk songs and classic hits pretty much non stop all afternoon. After a couple of litres most people were standing up on the benches singing away. Being the first day most tents were jammed full and shut their doors around 2pm, so were stayed inside this one tent almost all of the afternoon. Great fun. But someone remind Lea it’s a good idea to eat something before consuming 3 litres of beer…our little surfy chick had to have a ‘sleep’ that afternoon!!!!

Sunday was the best day though. One of the best days I've ever had I reckon. We met up with Ange and spent 11 hours in the Hoffbrau house. And it was unreal! Just the best fun. This house is known as the tourist house, and it was full of all the travellers – the Aussies, Kiwis, Safas, Americans, French, Italians…we met so many people and had the most awesome time. We even ran into one of the guys from our boat race team at The Church last weekend! And Lea saw the girl she jelly wrestled with back in London! There was a giant rotating pig hanging from the roof, and if you had your undies or bras ripped off you (a very common occurrence) you had to pour your beer over them (or in one case we saw a girl just plunge her newly ripped off undies right into her stein – eughh, I wouldn’t be drinking out of that one afterwards…although hang on, I do recall having to skull from the gumboot of a Kiwi boy dressed as a sumo wrestler….hmmmm) anyway you had to drench your undies in beer and then attempt to throw it up and onto the pig! Unlucky for those in the pig pen below who got undies on their heads! (and if you miss you get 7 years of bad loving!)
The undie covered pig

Every 5 mins, or so it seemed, the brass band up on the stage played ‘ambrosie’ which was literally the drinking song, the band master stood up holding his stein high in the air, and we all stood up too and cheersed everyone on our table. Quite often we got covered in beer as people cheered over enthusiastically and the steins broke! It was one of those days you just don’t want to end. Everyone there so happy; drinking, singing, laughing, meeting new people…not a care in the world. Just having a brilliant time. It was fantastic.
Us outside the Hofbrau tent

On Monday we checked out all the other tents, some awesome decorations. Outside the Lowenbrau tent is a giant lion that roars and brings a stein to it’s mouth. Outside another is a massive ox rotating on a spit. And inside all the tents are thousands of chickens roasting on skewers, to curb the beer munchies. And all the pretzel girls walking around. We went back to the Hofbrau house for a few hours and met some cool Kiwis and Americans that we drank with before having to leave and drive back to Friedrichshafen for our 9.40pm flight back to London. Whoever’s idea it was to only stay 3 days at the Oktoberfest they should be shot!!! We could have stayed a week!! But probably good for our livers and our wallets that we didn’t. But definitely the best festival I have ever been too. We were even thinking about going back in 2 weekends time…but that might be overdoing it a little! Ha ha. Prost!!