Oktoberfest 2007

---

Two words everyone….BEER FEST. Oktoberfest was awesome!!!!!. Fun times all round and I am so heading back there!!

We left for our journey late Thursday night and caught the Megabus down to London. I don’t know what I was thinking when we booked the Megabus but it was the cheap way to get down south. It’s an overnight bus and it was packed. We arrived in London around half 7 in the morning. We had a few hours to fill in before meeting up the rest of our trip mates, so we settled in for lots of coffee and brekkie. Fought our way through the crowds on the tube and arrived at the Globetrotters again. It seemed like only yesterday we were there last!! We had the lovely Jaz as our trip leader and after loading up the bus we were on our way to beer fest. The trip to Munich took about 18 hours (yep that long!!!) We arrived at our campsite at Thalkirchen around 7.30am Saturday morning and checked into our tents. The first shuttle to the grounds was leaving at 9am so we quickly freshened up and jumped aboard. I don’t know what I was expecting but Beerfest is huge. It is like the Melbourne show on steroids. I think from memory, they had over 900,000 visitors last year (don’t quote me on that though). Saturday was opening day of the festival so we headed into the Lowenbrau beer hall and grabbed a bunch of tables outside. Tap off wasn’t until 12pm so we hung around for a few hours until the madness started. There was a grand parade and all the beer tents have floats that go past, it was pretty cool. You couldn’t get inside any of the beer halls on the first day cause everyone heads inside to watch tap off (first beer poured of festival). I think the mayor does this in the Hofbrau beer hall. It was madness after 12. I would never have believed that the beer ladies could carry 12 steins at once until I saw it for myself. It is truly a sight to see. They are amazing. The sun was blazing on Saturday and we hung out until the early evening with our new friends drinking steins. We headed home on the Topdeck shuttle and I was in bed at 9.15pm on the first day!!!!

Woke up Sunday morning feeling a little rough but the smell of bacon & eggs lifted my spirits a bit. We grabbed a hearty breakfast and were all set for the day. First up today was a trip out to Dachau Concentration Camp. It was built in 1933 and was the first and largest camp that Hitler set up during his Nazi reign over Germany. It is a pretty daunting place and is huge. Most of the camp was destroyed when the US liberated the camp but they have rebuilt a couple of the bunkers to show what conditions people were forced to live in. The bunks were three high and filled the rooms and the toilets/shower rooms were tiny and it’s quite a depressing place. We strolled through the chapels and then headed over to the crematoriums. We walked through the gas chambers that Hitler designed as showers and that was really depressing. I can tell you that by the time we got back on the buses to leave, I was really in need of a drink. We headed back to Beer Fest and Jods & I decided to pace ourselves today by strolling around the grounds for a few hours. I was determined to eat my way around beer fest but the beer won out in the end. We went on the giant swing ride which gave us a bird’s eye view of the grounds. I don’t mind rides but this one really freaked me out….you are swinging through the air with only a tiny metal bar holding you. I was not in my happy place on that ride!!! We strolled through the Hoftbrau tent and watched the ‘pig pen’ from the outside. The ‘pig pen’ is where (if you are brave enough) you make a mad dash through the crowd and hopefully reach the other side with all your clothes in tack. It doesn’t happen very often but it’s a classic to watch. You see people make the dash and then about half way, you see tops, bras etc fly up into the air and land on this giant character hanging from the roof. It’s priceless. We headed to the Paulaner tent to meet up with the guys after this. It was so much fun. There was dancing on tables, lots of singing and drinking, it was awesome. After many hours, someone decided that it was time to hit the rides so we left the tent and made our way to the dodgems. After a not so successful lap around the track, it was time for the roller coasters. They had one there that had the Olympic rings as part of the ride. Jods & I jumped on and it was great. Not so great by the 4th ring but it was good all the same. We ended up on this ride which is like the Viking ride at Seaworld back home and then we hit the giant drop with these random Dutch people. It was time to head home after all this adventure and we made our way back to the shuttle back to the campsite. After freezing my ass off in the tent on Saturday night, I decided it was time to layer up before jumping in the sleeping bags.

Woke up early Monday morning and grabbed some brekky before heading back to the tents to pack our bags because we were heading home that afternoon. We headed into Munich for a walking tour with Jaz after breakfast. We made our way to one of the remaining bits of the old city walls and started from there. A lot of Munich was bombed and/or destroyed during the war so a heap of the buildings had to be rebuilt. That is why there are two town halls (right next to each other) in Munich. We passed the Hofbrauhaus and made our way to the square to check out the Glockenspiel. There was a lot of scaffolding around the sphire but at 12pm, the glockenspiel kicked off and did its little dance. They say the dance celebrates life after the plague that engulfed much of Europe many years ago. We made our way to Frauenkirche Church as our last stop on the walking tour. Random Fact: They say that the architect promised the devil that you could not see a window from the inside of the church and in return the devil would help him build the church. When the church was completed the architect took the devil to the middle of the church where you couldn't see any windows and in a fit of rage, the devil stamped his foot down and left the footprint in the stone floor of the church. We had some free time before heading back to meet the last shuttle to the campsite, so we decided to head the Hofbrauhaus to try a traditional pork knuckle. As Jods, Cassie, Katlyn and I we were all wearing our thongs we had to sneak in the back door and then made our way to the nearest table. We ordered our beers and pork knuckles and when they arrived, they were delicious. It certainly filled you up for the rest of the day. We made our way back to the beer fest grounds and grabbed some chocolate covered fruit before meeting up with everyone else to head back to camp. We left Munich around 5pm on Monday night for our 18 hour journey back to London. We arrived back in London around 12pm Tuesday. It is such a long trip on a bus/ferry and I am so flying the next time I go to Oktoberfest. We grabbed some lunch at the Raven and then made our way to the airport to catch our flights back home. All in all, it was a great weekend and I had the best time. Bring on next years beer fest!!!!!!!!!!!

---