Oktoberfest 2009

The next trip on our travel wish list was Oktoberfest - the German beer festival. Having worked in a German pub of the same name, I thought I was prepared for what was to come - but nothing could have prepared me for this weekend.


Dane and I flew to Munich on Friday the 18th of September to meet our tour group at the hostel in town. We settled in to our room around midday, so we headed to a nearby pub for some lunch. I LOVE German food. There is just so much of it, and its all about the meat and beer! Afterwards we headed for the train station and made our way to Dachau, the concentration camp. This place has a cloud hanging over it - just so much history, and pain. It is impossible not to feel it while you are walking around, looking at pictures of how it used to look, the people and what they were put through. We saw where they lived, and where they were killed... it was horrific. It was an incredibly heavy afternoon, but I wouldn't take back the experience...


To lighten the mood up, that evening we joined our tour group at this amazing beer garden. There were hundreds of long tables outside in the garden, and one long food/beer hut where you got your drinks etc - and everyone just sat outside drinking steins and getting to know one another. It was a relatively early night for Dane and I, as we wanted to be fresh for the next day - the Opening Ceremony.


It was a very early morning start for us - the beer halls were only opening at 10am, but in order to get into one, you had to be there at about 7am. When those doors opened it was like a stampede - people running over tables and benches, jumping over fences and pushing their way through the crowd to get in. Luckily for us, my friend Tori got there even earlier than we did and they secured a great table, which Dane and I tagged on to. Then the waiting really began - the first beer was only poured at 1pm, after the Mayor had made a speech and opened the first keg of the festival. We could buy food and soft drinks, and that was it. There were German guards walking all over the place making sure we weren't sleeping at our tables - it was quite scary!


When the first beer is poured, your beer maiden makes her way to your table and takes your order - bringing your whole tables order, about 12 -14 people's beers at one time. It is unbelievable how many steins they can carry at once. They mostly wear weight lifting gloves, and they walk around with whistles in their mouths to let people know they are coming - and boy, if you stand in their way, there is no stopping them from trampelling all over you to get past. It was definitely a sight to see! We stayed in the beer tent all afternoon, going through stein after stein - until beer o'clock was over for us and we headed out to see the other sights of the festival and other nearby pubs.


The next day was to be the same thing all over again. But, as Dane and I only had that last day there to visit the actual festival, we decided to spend the morning walking around the funfair section, eat pork knuckles and look for souveniers. Only later in the afternoon did we head towards a beer tent - a different one this time - and picked up from where we left off the day before. We found a few of our friends in the tent and joined them for a couple of steins. Sadly to say - my camera didn't make it out of the tent alive. Wearing sandals wasn't the smartest thing I have ever done, as people spill their beer everywhere and I slipped on the benches and fell on to my camera. So all photos are courtesy of, well, other people.


The next day was our last day in Munich, and we wanted to see some of the actual city and not just the beer festival, so we joined a free walking tour - which was one of the most interesting things I have ever been on. The tour guide's knowledge was amazing - he took us all through the town, and taught us about the history of the area, with a big focus on Nazi Germany.


He showed us the street where people were forced to salute to Hitler, and the alley they used to walk down instead as a silent protest to Hitler. He showed us a few buildings that were bombed by the allies, and the photos that they took of the city before the bombings, so that they could rebuild it to look exactly the same as before. It was really amazing.


After the walking tour it was airport time for us, and we joined the queue to other antipodeans making their way back to London from a very heavy weekend of drinking. Some had lost their pride and their dignity, others had lost their friends, and even more were missing their flight. I'm glad Dane and I made it a mixture of beer festival and history exploration - it was a great weekend!