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Published: September 21st 2010
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The Before Picture
Just before the first stein. To the right are Isabel, Jens and Marco. Months ago we were told that you did not need a ticket to get into a beer tent at Oktoberfest; just wait around for a table to open and then go in. Well, that may be true in the middle of the week at a normal Oktoberfest, but this is the 200th anniversary of the Oktoberfest and Saturday was opening day.
About 2 months ago, we were told that it was now just about impossible to get into a tent without a reservation. That's when I started calling and working with a concierge at our Munich hotel, Simon. He said he would try to find something. About a week ago, he still had nothing and then 4 days ago, I got an email from him that he had a table for us in the Kafer Tent for the grand opening at 12:00 noon Saturday. The table would hold 8 people, so I told Isabel that she could bring another friend or 2. Simon told us to make sure we were at the tent by 11:00 to get in at 11:30. That's when the fun started.
The night before, we walked around our hotel area and there were bunches of
stores selling the traditional Bavarian clothing, the dirndls for the girls and the lederhosen and shirts for the men. We didn't know if we wanted to get dressed in these type outfits, but when we saw tons of people walking around in them, we thought we'd give it a try. Our hotel is located only about 4 blocks from the Oktoberfest grounds, which was great. We figured we would leave for Oktoberfest at 10:30 easily getting us there by 11:00. In the morning, we ran to a store to buy something. Dan got a green Oktoberfest tee shirt. Bob bought a traditional Bavarian shirt and Jan & Marilyn bought cute checked blouses, one red and one blue. A lot of the shirts are simple blue and red checks. We gave ourselves all of 15 minutes to buy this stuff, run upstairs to change and start off to the grounds.
Little did we know how tough this walk would become. There were hundreds of thousands of people walking there. This is the 200th anniversary of the Oktoberfest and it was opening day. We finally got into the grounds, but our tent was at the far end of the grounds. The
throngs of people were incredible. You could barely move along, shoulder to shoulder with the streaming mass. It was now past 11:00 and we got stuck right in the middle of the grounds. We were right in front of the largest tent, the Hofbrau tent, which holds 10,000 people. (BTW, the tents are really not tents, they are permanent buildings now. I guess they used to be tents years ago.) It turns out the mayor and part of the opening parade were going into the Hofbrau for the opening ceremony; a speech by the mayor followed by opening the first keg with an axe. Security would not let us get across the lane to get to our tent until the mayor and his group were well inside. By now, it was probably 11:45 and all I could think was we would lose our table by not being on time. We finally mashed our way through the crowd and arrived at our tent and found that we had our table and Isabel was already there along with 2 friends, Jens and Marco. Jens is an old school friend of Isa's from Stuttgart and Marco and Jens went to the University together.
Check Out the Spread!
Love all the sausages. As with all travel, the people are the best part. We are so lucky to be able to share this with Isabel and her friends. These three young people were wonderful, very bright and all three of them speak English very well. We ordered our first steins, which are pretty big--1 liter. We truly enjoyed the gemutlichkeit with our new friends.
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