Oktoberfest

Friday 9-21

After a long 9-hour bus ride, we got to the Hostel in Munich at about 7a.m. Here we put our bags in the storage room and got our room assignments (the rooms weren’t open until 3p.m.). We used the restrooms, changed clothes, whatever we needed to do then headed to breakfast (it was pretty good, the typical spread here of bread meat and cheese). After breakfast we met our guides and paid for the beer walking tour we were going to take (it was about a 40 minute walk just to get there).

We walked to old town to meet the tour guide, when we got there he introduced us and gave us a brief description about what the tour would entail. For example, we were not only drinking (4 kegs for 50 people) we were also going to play drinking games along the way. If the guide said grenade, we were all supposed to drop to one knee and put our hands on our heads the last person to do this had to drink. If the guide said shark, we were all supposed to find something nearby and stand on it (basically get off the pavement), last one had to drink. If someone was caught talking while the guide was talking, or if they spilt any beer, they had to drain their cup. And if anyone said the word “mine” they had to do 10 pushups…I saw all of this happen at least once. I was careful to pay close attention so I didn’t have to drink too much…even so; I had probably 2 and a half glasses before we finished the tour at lunch. I was really good at the grenade game since I am short and already low to the ground, plus I am catholic so I have been genuflecting for the past 20 years. My friend Zach who is about 6’ 3” or so wasn’t so lucky, he got caught a couple of times as the last one to react.

When the tour was over (a couple of hours later), we stopped at the hofbrau house (a famous restaurant that is like an everyday beer tent). Here we ordered food (no beer since we had been drinking all morning) and had a nice lunch. I had bratwurst and potato salad, it was really good. After this we walked the 40 minutes back to our hostel. At the hostel we had to get about 20 different keys because we couldn’t get into our room. They told us they would send someone up to help us, and they did…45 minutes later. When we were finally able to get into our room we all decided to take a nap (none of us had slept well on the bus). At about 7:30 or 8p.m. I woke up and decided that I was going to go to the lobby to use the Internet. I was down there for about an hour or so then decided to go back to the room since the Internet was really slow. After that I got ready for bed and went to sleep knowing that I would have to get up early to get to a tent.

See Pictures from Friday below:



Saturday 9-22:

Woke up at 6a.m. got ready then headed to Oktoberfest, getting there at about 7:30a.m. It was rainy and cold out especially since the sun was barely up yet. We got to the grounds and decided to wait in line at the Lowenbrau house. We had a pretty good spot in line (you can see from my pictures). We were behind a bunch of people from Australia and we started up a game of 20 questions with them, then talked about what they did, where they were from ect. It was nice and helped pass the 2-hour wait time.

By 8:50a.m people had stopped standing in line and had started to budge, crowding around the door. When the doors opened at 9 we were hardly able to move because of everyone shoving…I compared it to black Friday. Needless to say, though we had a good spot and waited for 2 hours, so many people cut in line and pushed trough to save entire tables that when we got in the doors we couldn’t find a place to sit. Gianna and Allison found a spot with some Australians but they didn’t save enough spots for Zach, Andrea, and I. We walked around and looked for seats but having no luck we decided to leave Oktoberfest (they didn’t start serving until noon anyways and it was only 9:30).

We decided to go back to the Hofbrau house and get a beer there with our lunch. This time I bought a beer (it tasted pretty bad to me but I was going to drink it), I ordered a pretzel and some spinach pasta with cheese sauce. It was all pretty good, minus the beer with a bad aftertaste. I had half a beer (half of a liter that is) before eating anything, so I was starting to feel the beer a little bit. After eating I was better but I was still feeling a little tipsy. We ended up sitting with a group of 3 Italians, I am not sure where in Italy they were from but it was kind of nice anyways. There were a lot of Italians and a lot of Australians there.

After lunch Zach, Andrea, and I walked around and looked at a couple of the shops before heading back to our hostel for a nap. We woke up at about 6 and Zach and I decided to go back and give Oktoberfest another try. Andrea who wasn’t feeling well stayed to sleep. Off to Oktoberfest! We got there and passed a lot of drunk people who were leavening, we decided to wait outside a tent that didn’t have too long of a line. We waited for maybe a half an hour or so and were able to get a seat outside in the beer garden…It was still really cold out but it was not raining anymore so we sat with a crowd to keep warm.

We both ordered a beer and chicken for dinner. The beer was a little better than the one I had in the morning though still had the beer taste to it (I’m not a huge fan of beer yet but it slowly grows on me). When we got the chicken it was so warm and delicious, warm was the main thing because my hands were really cold. I took some pictures of it that you can see below. Later a waitress came by with an apple strudel so Zach bought one and we split it…it was really delicious.

Shortly after eating, we invited a couple to sit at our table since it was only Zach and I at the table. We ended up spending the rest of the night with them, they were a couple from bologna, Italy so we were able to speak a little bit of Italian to them and they were able to speak English pretty well. Ferdinando and Zach got along great; by the end of the night they were talking like they were old friends. Serena and I were the “baby sitters” of sorts so both of us were a little more lucid then the boys. I told Zach he could drink as many as he wanted as long as he could still walk to get home, and he didn’t do anything too stupid. This seemed to be a pretty good bargain so he agreed. We stayed at the tent until about 11 or so talking and drinking with Ferdinando and Serena.

After the tent closed, we headed to one of the rides…it is like a giant spiral slide but to get up to the platform you have to take a conveyer belt so it is like a treadmill at about a 30 degree incline and at a speed of about 5. It was pretty entertaining watching all of the drunk people try to make their way up the conveyer belt, there were some workers who would jump on after people and push them up so that they didn’t fall backwards. When it was time for Serena to go she only stumbled a little bit before she was caught by one of the workers. Ferdinando wasn’t so lucky; he fell backwards and had to ride the rest of the way up on his back. Zach was the same way except when he fell his long legs got caught in railing and he had to be pulled backwards before he could continue moving. This was all really entertaining from the ground.

After this we all walked to the exit and to the tram. At the tram we said goodbye to Ferdinando and Serena and they offered for us to come visit them sometime in bologna and stay with them for a day or two. After they got on the tram to go back to their car, Zach and I walked the couple of blocks back to the hostel. Not surprisingly, we were the last ones back when we got there at 1a.m. Zach was pretty wasted but still functional, and I had only one and a half steins in the 4 hours we were there so I was fine. We got ready for bed and went to sleep. I got a couple of hours of sleep before I heard Zach say something, next thing I know he fell out of bed and woke everyone up, turns out he was on the ladder then just slipped and fell. He was all right but it scared everyone in the room with the loud noise. Lets just say we all had a good laugh about it in the morning.

See photos from Saturday below:



Sunday 9-23:

We woke up and packed up our things before going to breakfast. Zach, Andrea, and I were going to meet the tour guide from the beer walking tour that we took on Friday. He was supposed to be going to Dachau concentration camp but we weren’t able to find him at the train station. After looking for the group for about 20 minutes we decided to just buy tickets and go on our own.

After about an hour we made it to Dachau. It only cost us 6 euro to get there and that included the bus we had to take from the train station. When we got there we all three bought the audio tour so that we could learn a little bit about the sites. We walked around and followed the audio tour for a couple of hours, and watched the documentary in the museum. We probably could have spent more time there but knowing that we had to meet the bus to go back to Florence at 4p.m we decided to leave at about 2:30.

We went back to Munich and collected our things and found seats on the bus. We waited for nearly a half an hour before everyone was there. The last girl on the bus had obviously just come from Oktoberfest and was obviously wasted. She got on the bus then just as we started backing up the bus to leave she realized that she didn’t pick up her stuff from the hostel so we had to stop so she could go get that. As soon as she got on the bus I knew she was either going to be obnoxiously drunk or she was going to get sick…sure enough, 30 minutes into the bus ride she gets sick all over the bus and herself. Everyone around her is spreading out trying to get away from the smell and I am just trying not to look at it, though I wasn’t surprised when it happened. We stopped at the next rest stop and tried to clean it up as best we could…lets just say that our bus driver was extra pissed off. I made a note to thank him for the whole situation, I thanked him when we stopped for food then again when we got back and I think that made him feel a little better, that or he had just cooled down enough because he had seemed friendly enough to me.

We got back to Florence at about 1a.m., I talked to my family for a little bit then went to bed. All in all I think it was a fun weekend even though it was cold, rainy, and disorganized.

See pictures from Sunday below: