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Published: October 3rd 2008
First round!
The first round of steins at about 10am, yay!Guten tag! My first foray to Oktoberfest in ze land of ze Germans consisted of waiting FOREVER to get our baggage at the airport, and finding Dana & Rochelle who flew into the other terminal in Munich - the airport is humungous! After standing in line for a taxi and being entertained by a group of guys in sombreros and ponchos accompanied by a stereo playing latin music (as well as the Austin Powers theme song WTF?) we zoomed off to our hostel. And by zoom, I mean about 150-160km p/hour on the highway - James was very excited.
Our friend Sian managed to scour Munich on the Friday and obtain some traditional German dirndl dresses for us as all the locals who attend the festival clad themselves in the traditional wear, so we thought we'd try it too. Amazingly Sian did a great job and the dresses fit perfectly for the 4 of us, but sadly the boys opted out of the leirderhosen - not sure why really.
We got up very AM on the Saturday to get ready and walk the 5 minutes to Oktoberfest from the hostel (and it was fricking cold!) and managed to get
Would-be-beer-wench
Yeah, I can drink two at once, no problem, errrhhh there about 845am and stand in the already massive line to get into the Hofbrau tent. Whilst in the line, we were also getting SMS updates from our friend Jenny in Melbourne on what the score was in the AFL Grand final (James is a massive Hawks fan). After literally being sardined from all sides for half an hour, they closed the tent just as we got near the front and we had to find somewhere else. Unfortunately by that time most of the tents had closed (where it was nice and warm inside with music, tables & beer), so we had to settle for a table outside the Paulaner tent.
By this time we had found out that the Hawks had won the final, so James was totally up for his first stein at 10am in the morning and thus was a happy chappy the rest of the weekend! Now, the rules for Oktoberfest are thus:
1. Acquire a table:- no table = no stein, no food
2. Toilets:- try not to go if you don't need to (somewhat difficult when consuming litres of beer), but if you must, allow 30-45 mins from start to finish, as
Paulaner tent
Unfortunately we were not inside the first day, so content with watching from afar the lines are massive!
3. Beware of the Italians, especially their hands...
4. Learn the lines to 'Heeeeeeyyy, Hey Baby - Oooohh, Ahhhhh, I wanna knooooww if you'll be my girl' - the apparent theme song of Oktoberfest no matter your native language
5. Learn to like beer even if you are not a beer drinker - that would be a 'no', they do not serve anything but beer at the beer tents (funnily enough)
Most of Saturday was spent drinking steins at the table (I managed 3 for the day, which wasn't bad I think!) meeting a fair few people including Aussies, Kiwis, a German here and there, as well as a few crazy Italian girls waiting in line at the toilets where one kept repeating 'Aiuto, Aiuto' - which means 'Help' in English - she needed to go bad!
Sunday was less crazy with not as many people, and we scored a table on the balcony in the Lowenbrau tent (side note: not sure why they are called tents as they are actually big structures!) and dug into the steins again. I actually didn't find the taste that bad by the second stein, and I have
Keg hat
Happy boy after finding out the Hawks won the AFL and celebrate with beer, a silly hat and some 'blue steel' to say, the roast chicken & saurkraut was fantastic! We also managed to stick our heads into a few of the other tents which are all themed with various decorations.
We also took in some of the other festivities which did not include drinking (didn't know that was possible at Oktoberfest initially) and took in some dodg'em cars and crossbow shooting, but we did stay away from the nasty looking amusement rides which I thought was quite sensible after a few steins.
The whole weekend went very quickly, and though my German is still no better, we had a fantastic time.
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non-member comment
Cuteness
you look so cute in your dresses, love it!