Oktoberfest not Octoberfest

Overview
After a 24 hour round trip bus ride..yes 12 hr each way... I am finally home from Oktoberfest. The bus ride wasn't actually that bad because I was able to sleep on the way there, not the story coming home. So for those of you that do not know what Oktoberfest is: It is a two week long beer festival in Munich Germany. It celebrates the different Breweries in the Munich area and is set up like a huge camp ground with "tents" (aka buildings but their called tents) and each being completely different inside. Some are more geared toward German families while others, like the one we went to, are more geared toward students and are a lot louder and more active inside. Oktoberfest doesn't serve beer in a normal way..they only serve beer by the Liter aka Stein. A stein is a one liter size glass mug that costs 10 EUR and waitresses carry around up to 10 at a time serving drunk patrons (I have no idea how they carry so many...everyone congratulates them the first time they see it.) The other part that makes Oktoberfest Oktoberfest is the food. The food ranges from tent to tent but over the course of two days I had about four pretzels (the size of your torso), a half a rotisserie chicken, a weinersnitzel and a two foot long hot dog.

View from top of swing ride...tents along right

In addition to the beer and food tents there are also plenty of rides as seen in the picture to the right. For reasons unknown to me every ride involves spinning or flipping and how people aren't constantly getting sick on them amazes me considering everyone has to be at least 3 steins in to pay 5 EUR to go on the swings for 2 minutes but I digress. I went on the swings and it was awesome. I took this amazing picture just for this blog (your welcome) and had a blast walking around the camp grounds. Luckily I only lived 5 minutes off the grounds walking distance.

My daily activities
So personally my friends and I spent both days in the Hofbrau tent. But Corey what about the other tents? Good question, essentially once it passes around 9:30am its really hard, say impossible, it get into a tent. So once we got a table we stayed as long as possible (4:30pm). On Friday we arrived at 8am after our long bus ride and went immediately to the camp grounds. Friday was actually pretty easy to get in. We got in line around 9:15, got in at 9:45 and the tent was full by 11. We got a table in the standing room area in the center because the tables get reserved at certain times and they kick you out at those times (reservations are made about 10 months in advance and usually only to Germans). The band was playing random German songs, and people were standing on tables chugging their beer to the applause of the crowd (or failing and getting booed); it was awesome.

Hafbrau "tent", Band in center and tables all around the sides

My favorite part of the tents was the music. In the tent we were in they even played Sweet Caroline in English to everyones applause.

On Saturday we did pretty much the same thing. We got in line at 7:30am though which was completely necessary because we weren't really even close to the front but luckily we got in and got a table next to these three Italian guys who looked American but only spoke italian; I broke out my Italian 100 level sayings and asked them their name and how are you, after that I got nothing besides numbers, pizza and panino. We didn't leave the tent until around 5pm and after that we went to sleep around 8, there is a reason the tents close at 9-10, no one is up past then.

Overall this trip was amazing, I highly recommend it so here are my Oktoberfest tips:

1. On saturday get there early, like 7-7:30 and once your in stay in
2. Keep an eye out for reserved tables, they'll kick you out if your in one at the reserved time
3. Stay close to the camp grounds, you don't want to deal with the mobs in the subway after 4 steins
4. Even though they moved Oktoberfest to September to make it a little warmer (yup its true) its still really cold 
5. If your not going to buy the traditional Leiderhuson or a Dirndl for girls wear flannel button down shirts, you'll fit in as a foreigner 
6. Don't go in with too much of a budget, drinks are 10EUR, food is about 10EUR and snacks are about 5EUR; you're only there once in a lifetime; just eat it. 

My next trip is Barcelona with a Barca FC (soccer) game Saturday night then an off week and FALL BREAK!

Haufbrau tent on Saturday

CIAO!