Yesterday morning, we took the train from Regansburg (rainburg) to Munich where we met up with Dave and Lisa's German friends at the hotel. We then dumped our luggage and headed off to Octoberfest. We arrived around 2 pm after following the heard of people to the front gate.
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| From 2008_09_17 - Eastern Europe |
Octoberfest is really just a big fair where the beer tents really got out of control. People aren't partying outside, they are just doing the nornal fair things like playing silly carnival games and riding rollor coasters. The real fun happens in the twenty beer tents. Each tent is sponsered by a different brewery and holds almost ten thousand people.
The Germans in our group are on a mission to find the tent that serves the roasted ox. This tent is easy to find since it has a thirty foot ox on a spit over the front door.
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| From 2008_09_17 - Eastern Europe |
The tent is already packed, but we manage to quickly find a table.
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| From 2008_09_17 - Eastern Europe |
Beers are quickly produced and we order some of the ox. Pretty tasty.
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| From 2008_09_17 - Eastern Europe |
There is a band on a raised stage in the middle of the tent playing traditional German music. Many of the people in the tent are wearing traditional Bavarian outfits. My favorite being the nice blouses on the girls. There are also other costumes, mostly involving silly hats.
Kathy is not a beer drinker and they do not serve wine, so she tries this concoction that is half beer and wine. Yuck. There is a solution for Kathy's dilemma, there is a special wine tent. We decide to split from the group and head off to the wine garden. On the way we stop in a couple of other tents to check out the antics. The wine tent is at full swing when we arrive and we find a table on the upper balcony. From there we had a great overview of the entire tent.
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| From 2008_09_17 - Eastern Europe |
Kathy orders some proseco and I order weissbier. Six other people join us at the table. They are from Munich and have just popped over after work (I guess it is about 4 now). A couple more beers and wine and we are dancing and singing along with everyone to the rockin tunes of the Hot Frogs. About that time, Lisa texts me to join them at the Paulner tent - aisle 14. As I mentioned, these tents are huge so they have numbers on the posts so that you can find your seat. This comes in handy after a couple of beers.
Amazingly we find the rest of our group in the Paulner tent. More liters of beer are produced and then things just get crazy. Imagine ten thousand people singing and standing on the benches with raised mugs constantly toasting each other. The bands play everything. My favorite was "Sweet Home Alabama". This earned me lots of kisses from the Australian girls when I mentioned I was from Alabama.
They start closing down the tents at 10:30, which is good since I am seeing double at this time. Somehow we managed to make it back to our hotel and hit the pillows.
The next morning we are moving a bit slowly. We eat and then catch the train back to our car in Regansburg.
In Regansburg we walk downtown to the old city and have a late lunch on the cobblestones. We get a quick visit from the sun before it hides it face and turns to rain.
Tonight we go back to Dresden.
Andy
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