Everything at Oktoberfest is in epic proportions. The beer, the pretzels, all other food, the masses of people, the drunkenness, the Ein Prosit song, the number of exposed breasts, the happiness, everything!
We started off in one of the Augustiner tents, which has by far the best Fest beer of the three we had, and certainly felt the most traditional of the three which was a good introduction. After a few maß (litre of beer) we got talking with some young Germans who took us over to the Paulener tent where things are a little bit less traditional.
You're out of place here if you're not dancing on a bench, maß in hand, singing along to Sweet Caroline, Hey Jude, Que Sera, Sera , the Ein Prosit song (which never seems to end and requires you to prost and drink each time it finishes) or any other of a myriad of German drinking songs that you try to look as though you know the words to.
Refer to my rap sheet below to see the end result of this day.
Our second day was a bit more low key, we headed to the Spaten tent for one very specific reason - the oxen that is spit roasted. Yes, an entire oxen on a spit roast!
Things at the Spaten tent were a hybrid between the previous days tents. In this tent the Ein Prosit song really never ends though.
After a few maß and three separate helpings of Barti (the name of the Oxen we nommed), we left pretty well satisfied by our overall experience - the $$ can only stretch so far!
Other Stuff
The Tent
Our accommodation for the three nights was interesting, to say the least - a tent filled with about 50 bunk beds and 30 people sleeping on the floor. And we were in the smaller tent! However, at 25 euros each per night and when dorm beds in the city centre (we were a 7km walk to the centre) can be as much as 100 euros per night over Oktoberfest, you take what you can get. Fill a tent with 80 drunken youths and you can imagine the result.
One bonus of staying this far out did mean that we got to see the same squirrel, three days in a row, run across the road with an acorn in his paws, stocking up for winter.
Beery Stuff
Our first arvo's beer doings in Munich were a couple of maß at Augustiner Keller, which is an absolutely massive, very famous beer garden that would heave in summer, a couple of wheat beers at Weisses Brauhaus, which is quite a nice place despite its touristy location, and a plate of Nürnberg sausages with Augustiner dunkels at Nürnberger Bratwurst Glockl, of which both were very good.
Ham Sandwich
THE food highlight of Munich, and just about all of Germany, was this.
A magical roasted ham/pork hybrid wrapped in impossibly crispy, crunchy crackling smothered in spicy mustard and slapped in a bun. Oh our collective god!
Konnexion Balkon
We also discovered these guys while wandering through central Munich - very cool and very funny.
Konnexion Balkon - Get Lucky
My rap sheet after one day at Oktoberfest:
- being told by our new German friends that I should ease up on the beers
- prosting so hard that I smashed my maß
- being told that I should stop drinking
- dancing on the table (a big no no)
- kicking Nix's maß onto the floor
- being told that we should probably leave
- walking us home in the opposite direction for an hour despite Nix trying to explain that I was wrong
- attempting to get us on the wrong tram just to save face
- the threat of divorce
...and after the second day:
- vomiting* in a Munich tram station
- vomiting* in front of a fitness centre filled with people wearing electrode covered space suits
- breaking the bunk bed I was in (it literally fell to pieces - at least Nix wasn't in the one below) as I tried to swing onto the top one
- projectile vomiting* on the bloke's foot in the bed next to mine
- vomiting* on the floor as I ran outside
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| *The Alleged Culprit |
The Barrie-ometer of "Feel" - restrained excitement
The pug drought continues...
The Beers
Augustiner Weissbier, Dunkel, Fest
Schneider Tap 1 Weiss
Paulener Fest
Spaten Fest
