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Published: September 29th 2009
Well as most know we made it to the most talked about German festival in the whole world and of course its all bout the beer. Set in the Bavarian region in a lively city called Munich is a internationally known festival everyone must know called Oktoberfest!!! And yes it is just like everyone says and more...much more.
This year it started on the 19th of September and ends on the 4th of October. Many people may ask "If it is called Oktoberfest why is it in September?", well luckily l found out...this festival all started with a wedding festival on the 12th day in October of the year 1810. The wedding was that of Crown Prince Ludwig (later known as King Ludwig I) and Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen, who graciously invited the citizens of Munich to join in the wedding reception celebration at Theresienwiese (Meadow of Therese). It was a success, it lasted for 16 days, and inspired the idea to repeat a similar festival at the same time the following year. The festival was eventually prolonged and moved ahead to September to allow for better weather conditions and that is why it is in September and not
the couple we met on the train
not 2 mins in the festival and already met someone we knewin October, although it traditionally ends on the first Sunday in October.
We arrived on the second day, Sunday 20th of September via 3 trains for a total of 8 hours departing at 530am Grossenhain and arriving in Munich at 130pm where we met up with Andre's old school friend called Thomas. We went to his apartment and got ready for an awesome day. We took a few trains to get to the grounds and bought a beer before as it was going to be very expensive there, as it is at most festivals. When we arrived we couldn't believe it, we saw a couple that we had met on the train, they had said it is very hard to meet up with people because it is such a huge place, but not 2 mins in there and we see them!! There are about 14 different beer tents to choose from but we just went to the closest one. People were very welcoming and social asking us to join them, some said that getting a table is very hard later in the day because they expect to get over 6 million people there and not enough room. It is
so true but if your clever you can sneak into small spots on tables around the place. They were trying to fit as many tables into those tents as possible so the tables are very close and so when it came to being at a table we had to stand on the seat area unless you want to be squished. But most people were standing anyway singing and drinking, swaying and jumping to the awesome music being played near by. Lots of German traditional music and many others you may know. My favorite being "99 red balloons", played in German of course. Some locals even tried teaching it to me but as l was probably drunk l don't remember it so well. In each tent was a big mixture of cultures from many countries like France, Italy, Spain, UK, America, Australia, Germany and many more...however supposedly there was a tendency to be more of one country in each different tent. For example the first night we were in was the Aussie tent, quite by coincidence of course, but cool. There was a huge angel statue hanging from the sealing and all the Australians were throwing their leggings, underwear and bras
onto it, quite funny if you saw it. We got our first beers there, cost us around €9 euros each, thats around $15 AUD each....very expensive, however you got a 1ltr mug(Maß) each very tasty for beer(goes down well and easy) and it is very strong(as strong as 6 spirit drinks they said) so it is worth the money in the end cause you get drunk on little! We made loads of friends and had an awesome first night, we went home around 9ish.
The next day we just relaxed through the morning waiting for our friend to get back from doing study, so we could go out to the festival again. This time we were a little later than expected so had some issues with getting a table. We had to look through about 5 or 6 tents before we finally found a table with enough room for us. This tent was a bit smaller than the other one. The most interesting thing that night was a mysterious man in a full body black silky suit going around kissing girls. Quite funny. The same happened as usual, we sang songs, drank beer and enjoyed the night. l unfortunately
us and our beers
28 euros = about 71 AUD fell over that night. Some couple left our table that we were standing on and the bench over balanced and it tipped and l went head over heel. It was sooo funny, l didn't really get hurt so thats good. That night we stayed till about 930ish and Andre just drank a little too much and was sick a little on the way home, but nothing serious.
He felt really bad the next day but recovered by the time we were off to our third day at the festival. This time however we met up with an old friend who also lives in Germany. Amelie is a girl who l worked with at stables lodge in New Zealand. It was awesome to catch up with her and once again we were in another different tent from the last ones. Now this one was busy, but Amelie had some friends already there so they had saved some space for us. Not much different happened there really that was different but it was a very nice night too. Went home bout 10pm.
On our fourth and final night we went to meet up with some of Thomas's work mates. They
had a reserved place in a tent and even though we were not meant to be there we were able to sneak in. We had a nice view from the balcony above all the crowds. We talked more than sang this night as there were more people to talk to that Thomas knew. We stayed there right till the beer wasn't served no more...1030pm. Now this night l drank a little too much but nothing happened really just was drunk for a while and really sick all morning.
Talking bout the morning thats the day we left on the 24th of September. It was a fun and very interesting experience that l would love to repeat again next year.
What have l learnt from this experience???...Germans ain't the only ones who love there beer, everyone in the world love it. Also it seems beer can bring people together from all over the world and all have one thing in mind....getting drunk on beer and singing German songs. oh and if you throw one of those 1Ltr mugs into a crowd of people it does alot of damage and can hurt someone really badly and you will get arrested
for it(an Aussie guy did exactly that).
l hope you enjoyed reading this and looking at my photos. Would love some comments on your thoughts. Miss you all very much...oh by the way unfortunately my camera broke on the third night so l don't know how many more photos l can put on. l have lots of Oktoberfest though so enjoy. so for now l say
Auf Wiedersehen...
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