While attending Oktoberfest seems to come across as quite touristy to many of the Germans I’ve talked to, as an American living in Southern Germany for his one and only Oktoberfest as a resident, I’ll dispense with the excuses for attending. If you’re reading this, you must understand.
Gotta lead with the good photos – so I’m skipping ahead a little… here’s myself, J.O., and Ciara at Oktoberfest with the festing part of the day well underway…
Over the months leading up to Oktoberfest, I managed to gather that the “only” way to achieve the full Oktoberfest experience is to attend in tracht – that is, to wear the traditional Bavarian garb. Girls wear dresses called dirndls (I’m a fan), and guys wear outfits based on lederhosen (German for “leather pants”). So, I dutifully went out and got my lederhosen a few weeks prior to Oktoberfest – imposing a complete internet media blackout on any pictures of me in my ‘outfit’ such as to achieve maximum impact for public lederhosen debut on the opening day of Oktoberfest. Oktoberfest has come and gone, so now it’s time to share these pictures with the world.
Oktoberfest is HUGE – and by huge, I mean ginormous – but that doesn’t mean that there’s enough space to go around. My group – a consortium of friends, new friends, and friends for the day from Munich, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Nuremberg, the States, and others – resolved to go on the very first day of the fest. The biggest challenge is getting into one of the 14-odd beer “tents.” Now, I use the term “tent” loosely, as that’s what they’re called but the term seems a little underpowered as each “tent” holds 6,000-odd people. The astounding capacity notwithstanding, scoring space in the tents is a super-competitive process. The tents fill up within hours of opening in the morning, but even more challenging is the requirement that you must be seated at a table to be served beer. Therefore, finding table space for our group of 15 was – to say the least – challenging!
It came as news to me, but I must have been excited like a boy trying to sleep on Christmas eve – I could NOT get to sleep the night before. So, rolling out of bed at 6am to get in line for a tent was a painful affair. I was staying with James, so he helped herd my sleepy ass out of the apartment. A short stop at the bakery to pick up croissants (and some of that infamous European multi-fruit vitamin juice), and we were U-Bahning it to the Weisn.
Do I LOOK like a man who got enough sleep? And yes, that IS a blue bandana around my neck. I’m my own man and can wear powder blue with a pink checkered shirt when I want to! ;)
James displaying our bounty of croissants for the camera. Strangely, he DOES look like he got enough sleep.
Grandiose plans to get into the “main” tent with all the ceremonial first-day-of-Oktokeberfest-brouhaha notwithstanding, we ended up deciding to increase our chances of actually getting INTO a tent by picking a lesser tent: the Augustiner. We actually ended up getting fairly decent position in line – but, as it turns out, line positioning at a given door isn’t everything as each tents has multiple doors around the perimeter and they open in random order. It just so happens that our group picked the worst door (e.g. last to open), and once it opened, our compatriots in line were so frustrated with this state of affairs that the ensuing stampede nearly caused severe bodily harm. Once inside, a great land rush (for tables) was underway. But, luck was on our side, and we managed to secure a table with BARELY enough room for all of us.
Waiting outside.. for HOURS.. And yes, I think this is the only nearly full body-shot of me and my lederhosen. So enjoy it!
Then, the waiting began… On the first day of Oktoberfest, the mayor of Munich ceremonially taps the first keg at noon, and prior to that time, no beer may be served in any of the tents! There we were, finally seated in our tent at about 9:30am, with no beer to be served for another 2 and a half hours! I should mention that, at this point, I was not a happy camper. I had slept for about 2 hours the prior night and we didn’t have time for a coffee stop in the morning (this latter point was a disaster). Coffee was nowhere to be found while waiting in line, and they weren’t serving it in the tent either. That situation finally became unbearable at about 10:30am, and I left the tent in search of coffee – the risk, of course, being that the doors would be closed when I returned and entry impossible. Anticipation got the better of me, and two double espressos, an apple streudel, a coke, and a bratwurst later, I successfully re-entered the tent a happier man.
Finally: noon hits, and the beer starts flowing. Who could really say how, but the hours flew by, the cameras kept taking pictures (included for your viewing pleasure below), and the beers (served in liter-large units) kept flowing.
Our table… each glass on the table holds one liter of beer.
Some of the tables around us, as soon by the blur-o-vision of my camera’s lens
Ciara and another person from our table, modeling the massiveness of the maß.
Emily was also at Oktoberfest but hadn’t arrived with our group… We had agreed to try to meet up, and open learning that we were in the Augustiner tent, somehow managed to get the four people in her group ALSO into “the Augstiner tent.” What followed was an hour-long comedy of errors punctuated by frequent international roaming phone calls and texts during which we tried to find each other. Well, it turns out that there were TWO Augustiner tents and that she lucked her way into the wrong one!! At this point it was probably 3 or 4pm and getting into ANY tent sounded like an impossibility, so I assumed that we’d missed our chance to take a UC Davis-alumni-in-tracht photo.
Never underestimate Emily, though. Somehow (the details are murky) she managed to get into OUR Augustiner tent an hour or two later, and joined our party! By this point, however, I’d say a third of our group had already left, a third was tragically drunk already, and a third was still in party mode… We made the best of it, had some more beer, and were merry.
Success in the face of adversity… She made it!
… and her patented “more beer please” pose.
Now, Oktoberfest tents don’t just serve beer… People couldn’t last the day drinking that much without food! Our tent was serving some particularly tasty chicken earlier in the day, but unfortunately I wasn’t hungry then. By the time Emily showed up, I was hungry, she was hungry, and we tried to get some chicken. The general level of drunken debauchery in the tent effectively precluded us from placing (or perhaps the waitress from understanding) this request, and so in the end we decided to leave and eat elsewhere.
So, we left, had bratwurst and desert, and continued to be merry with some rides (bumper cars that, sadly enough, we were not smart enough to operate and therefore missed on on half the ride, and the tall spinning chair ride). At this point (only 8:30pm!) the beer had taken its toll, and there was no viable alternative but to go home… I was staying with a friend in München, but Emily was staying well outside of the city and so I made what turned out to be the fateful decision to ride out with her to her hotel.
– Em’s not completely passed out, but this represents how we were feeling. Please note the time on the watch: before 10pm! SO TIRED!
After dropping Em off, I was waiting for a train home and… well… “fell asleep”. On the S-Bahn platform. Long story short (it could have happened many different ways), I lost my wallet. Not a great end to the night!
Whereas we had discussed going back to the fest on Sunday, my Sunday was actually spent calling lost and founds, filing police reports, and trying to live on a borrowed €20 bill long enough to make it back to Stuttgart.
Here’s where finally posting this blog entry two months late shows hidden genius: I can now report that the wallet was FOUND – more than a month after it was taken. Of course, the cash was gone and it had been in the mud for days, so it didn’t do me much good. I had already replaced all the credit cards and the driver’s license…
This was a significant travel milestone. I haven’t really felt alone or helpless at all on this trip until now. I’m used to traveling, used to Germany, and generally feel pretty in control at all times. For a few hours there, I was stuck in Munich with no money, no ID, no credit cards, and generally no idea what to do.
All this said, Oktoberfest was a truly amazing time… If I’m in Germany then next year, I will definitely be attending again!