Oktober fest Rosenheim

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28/8/10: Today was the day for Oktober fest. We arrived at the tents around 1:30pm, all the tables were pre-booked, it was looking like we were going to have to drink fast before we were kicked off our borrowed table. While we were waiting people were posing for photos in front of the first keg of beer. Fabian asked if we wanted a photo, me not being shy in front of a crowd got up and posed for a photo, I held the tap while Jacinta pretended to knock it into the barrel with the wooden mallet. It made for a fine photo but it was a better photo with the Aussie flag that we had carried with us the whole way. I whipped the flag out of my pocket and we both held it up. Just then a journalist started to take photos of us snapping hard and fast with his camera. He was a writer for an Australian and German newspaper and his name was Olaf. the paper gets published all over Australia. He was excited to find out about our travels where we came from and where we were going. He took some notes off us and snapped a few more photos of us when our beet arrived. We all had a good laugh; Jacinta said it was typical of me to get my head in the paper. We were halfway through our beer when the real owner of the table would turn up. They had started to pull down the very stage where we posed for the photos with the tap and the mallet. The mayor of Rosenheim had already done the honors of knocking in the tap with three hits. This was the start of the festival and the beers flowed hard and fast after that. The waitresses carried unbelievably heavy loads of beer; some more than a dozen at one time, this was probably just under 20kg. The stage was packed and tables and chairs replaced it. We were the first ones in line to receive a table for our group which amounted to ten by now. Another two would join us just as we sat down, this was Arthur whom we met in Lao; Fabian was his travelling companion back then. Arthur had brought his girl friend with him, her name was Mikaela and she was such a sweat lady; it was just unfortunate that we never got a chance to sit and talk much but I’m sure we would catch up with her another day.
We all finished our first beer at the same time. I felt fine and spoke to some of Fabians friends about past Beer fest or Weissen as it’s called in Germany. David mentioned that he had drank five beers in one sitting; of course the sitting was over a five hour period, but even so I thought it was a challenge I could try to match, especially after the first beer went down so fast and smooth. I was halfway through the second beer when I first started to feel the effects of alcohol. By the time I finished to second beer I was feeling very happy indeed, I started to respect the effort of five beers and realised that it wasn't going to be as easy as I first thought. I was halfway through the third when I was making friends with the other people on the table beside us and completely forgot to drink with the friends I really came to drink with. Somebody took my new WHERES DAN HAT that I only received off my mother two days prior when a package arrived from Australia. It was the last time I saw that hat but somehow I inherited another hat which resembled a giant beer mug. I wore it back to Fabians house later that night. I’m not ashamed to say that three beers was my limit for Oktober fest. The alcohol content was more than 6.5% and the mug held around one litre of beer; it doesn’t sound like much but it is when your are the end of the night.
The atmosphere of Oktober fest is incredible, it is a must and I can safely tick this off on the list of things I have to do. As we stumble out of the tents around 11:00pm we walked through the show grounds that was as big as an amusement park. The lights swirled in my head as much as the rides swirled in my blurred vision. It was hard to keep walking straight from all the distractions; my favourite distraction was of the cleavage kind. The German woman certainly know how to show off their breast, each trying to outdo the next; I’m sure if one of them had sneezed a little too hard there breast would have popped out so fast it would have made a sound like a cork shooting out of a wine bottle. We were lucky enough to catch a bus back home; I basically stripped off and fell into a nice warm bed snoring for the rest of the night.
29/8/10: Today I had a headache and a terrible hangover, I did nothing the whole day.

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