Oktberfest

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WS: We met up with Paul (my brother), Heather (Paul’s girlfriend), Richard (my dad), and Susan (Ali’s Indian friend from Scotland) to celebrate Oktoberfest in Munich. Below are a couple excerpts from them describing the trip as I have run out of things to say.

AM: I love hanging out with Will 24/7 but it was GREAT meeting up with Susan, Richard, and Paul and Heather to celebrate Oktoberfest. There is no better group to drink a ton of beer with! Richard is a beer beginner who downs an entire liter in 2 minutes flat and then disappears to go ride roller coasters. Paul and Heather are pros (like me). Susan and Will stuck with Radlers (a mix of beer and lemonade for lightweights). When we weren’t drinking beer, we went on a tour of a nude park in the middle of the city where we saw where all the older German men hang out during the day (literally, ha).

WS: In actuality, I stuck with the lagers and then also finished the ladies’ beers when they got warm.

RS: On our last night at the Oktoberfest, I found myself on the windiest roller coaster in the Fest. It was great fun that I’m sure my kids would have enjoyed, but they had run off to find more booze so they missed out on the ride of a lifetime. Once you lose someone at the Fest, there’s no way to find them, so we all had to fine our way home separately. Of course, I made it to our meeting point on time, but that was no use because I ended up just meeting myself there. We all found our ways home and it was an exciting end of a great trip. I do think I drank more beer this week then I have in the last 30 years of my life. The Germans really have a gift when it comes to producing beer and delivering it in mass quantities. I really enjoyed the way everything was built and the history around how they came to live the way they do. It seems the Germans worked hard and partied often.

SH: So I arrived in Munich to be instructed by Will to please locate his family and bring them safely to the apartment! Quite sure they would have made their own way just fine but it was nice to have some company for the train journey from the airport! The weather was great for the first couple of days & we had fun on the bike tour (although I don’t think my legs were so thrilled with being back on a bike so soon after my challenge!) Everyone was seriously thrilled that I wanted them to run up 333 stairs to the top of the tower to get the great views of Munich. But they were worth it in the end! We had a great trip to Neuschwanstein Castle and did some damage to a fair amount of Radlers (in my case), beer & wine! Ironically the best wine that I had turned out to be the exceptionally “expensive” bottle that Will so kindly picked out for me when we first arrived! Typical Will – spent a whole 2 euros on it!!! Needless to say I was sad to leave the party a little earlier than the rest and even more sad when I fell on my ass on the way to the train back to the airport!

WS – I spare no expense when it comes to my good friends, so the 2 euro bottles of wine were well worth the priceless company of my friends.

PS - Well we started out our journey with the scariest task of all ... trusting that our travel agent hooked us up with some sweet flights. I soon realized that we were going on three flights with two layovers for over four hours. I displayed my frustration and fired my agent immediately. Heather did not take kindly to her getting canned but soon got over it. So after over 24 hrs of traveling we finally found dad stranded as the first of many plans fell through.

Luckily he had only been waiting for 3 hrs. We found Susan and were on our way to the house, which I have to say Heather did a great job finding. We met up with a very skinny and hairy man, that I soon found out was Will, and Ali. First things first, we had to find beer. We found a half liter for 39 cents which was not too bad.

A few activities we wanted to do were to go to Oktoberfest, which was always a dream of mine, go on a bike tour, and go to a beer garden. The bike tour ended up being very interesting as it went directly through a nude tanning park where Ali, Susan, and Heather nearly fell off their bikes for some reason after riding perfect for the remainder of the trip. After the beer garden, which was an amazing display of beer, food and people, Will and I struggled to ride our bikes for some reason, which I don't understand due to the fact that we only had one beer.

One of the last things we did was visit a castle. The girls fooled us with trickery, which wasn't tough cause the beer was flowing pretty consistently throughout the trip. The fact was, in order to get to the castle there was an hour train ride, followed by 30 minutes of running around the train station, followed by a 4 hours train ride, followed by a 30 min bus ride, followed by another bus up to the castle. Times may be slightly exaggerated. Once we get there we go on a very dangerous bridge to take pictures. It was roughly 40 degrees and raining. Again temperatures may differ from other people’s accounts. So finally we proceeded to get in the 30 minute line for the tour which in itself was a grand total of THIRTY minutes! The castle only had a couple rooms finished but had great street appeal.

Oktoberfest was not really what I had envisioned. It took almost an hour to get a beer until the night we got a reserved table. The tent which was awesome once we got in.

And last but not least, the end of my trip was flying back. Apparently our first of three flights went into DC, an hour from home and we would have had nine more hours of traveling had I not caught this myself, as my travel agent thought we were in Washington but did not realize it was DC. So as our bags flew around the US, we were able to relax at home. All in all great trip and great people. Cheers!

WS: Oktoberfest was nothing like the movie Beerfest that I expected. Without table reservations, we had a very hard time finding a beer. With table reservations, we had a blast, but everything was still pretty tame from what I can recall…

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Photos

Munich
1st House - couln't get a table here. We borrowed someone else's for the pic and were immediately kicked off!

Back Stage at the Hafbrauhaus
Susan needed to make sure our Hafbrauhaus waiter would put enough lemonade in her Radler!

Action Shot
Everyone's normal reaction to a Will comment: Heather giving him the hand, Susan gearing up to tell him to bugger off, Paul coming over to break it up, and Richard still playing with his suspenders:)