Woooooooo Munich!!!
One of the things almost every Australian travelling Europe will hope to see if the world famous Oktoberfest, held surprisingly from mid-September to early October. It's perhaps the biggest beer festival in the world, welcoming people from all over Asia, Italy, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and definitely many more. In a nutshell, Oktoberfest began as a wedding celebration. With the news of the engagement of the prince at the time to a lovely lady, the King celebrated by throwing a huge horse race and party for all the locals. Everyone loved it, so much that they had another one the following year and it kept going and growing until one day it became less about the horse racing and more about just being a festival. I'm sure they probably drank just as much beer back then, but right now beer drinking is about the only reputation Oktoberfest has.
It was a 7-8 hour journey if I can remember correctly from Berlin. A long trip. I learnt how to count to 999,999 in German (I can never remember the word for million - Bloody hell). I think everyone around us was sick of hearing "Zwei und siebzig, drei und zwunzig...Uhhh".
When we weren't counting in German, this is how Sonja and myself kept ourselves amused on the bus.
We made it there and as usual being travelling girls, Lucy and Sonja marched their way up to the front and took control of the situation. They walked and we followed all the way to our accommodation called "The Tent". With a name like that, it sounds pretty exciting!
Before leaving Australia, my Dad told me a heap of stories about Germany and what he did, and one particular story was about his experience in one of these German "Tents". He said that for a couple euro, you would get given a crappy mattress and a section of the floor inside this tent. In it were about 100-200 other people, snoring, smelling and sleeping. Our version of the tent was pretty much exactly the same, except it cost 16 euro (The cheapest accommodation around for Oktoberfest it seemed). We were given three thick blankets each and a little card to say it was out bed. We walked in and it was just as cold inside this thing as it was outside. It was also starting to rain outside, which made things more exciting. We found ourselves quickly wondering how waterproof this thing would be. We set up our beds right in the middle of it, as it was the only space left - Probably not the worst place to have our beds as in theory, that should be the warmest spot - But it also means that people have to walk over our stuff. Drunk people. Ahh well, it was good enough I guess for what we were paying. Because Callum left it a little later to book, he found himself by himself in other tent. He had a bed the bloody bastard.
Not surprisingly, the campsite always had a keg of beer tapped and I think the tap was rarely in the off position. After setting up our sleeping arrangements, it started to rain/storm and so Callum and myself decided it was time for a beer and some grub. On the menu was chilli con carne, and who knows what kind of beer it was, but even though it was served in a plastic cup, it was cold and frothy - Gorgeous!
This is how the local wildlife at the campsite kept themselves amused.
It just happened to be our lucky night as a little band consisting of a banjo player, guitar player and a chap sitting on a box and hitting it with his hands came to the stage. They played all the hits from The Beatles, Chuck Berry and The Animals, to AC/DC, Nirvana and Kings of Leon. Callum fell in love and the band became an obsession for him. The girls spent their night laughing at Callum. Considering the atmosphere we were in and the festival we were amongst, we hit our blanket mattresses pretty early for our first night in Munich.
Waking up lovely and early the next day, the four of us made our way into the city to get our first look at the infamous beer fest. It was like nothing I expected. Think the Townsville Show times 10 in size and with better food, more beer, bigger rides, more beer, 100's of nationalities and way more beer. Although no beer was consumed today, we did eat our way around the festival. Salty gherkins, chocolate covered fruit, corn on a cob, pretzels (bretzel in German) bigger than your head, half chickens and most importantly, sausages were all the main attractions for our group. You could buy a metre of sausage.
Sonja and a gherkin.
We spent 20 minutes observing one particular side-show attraction I've always been curious about. One of the oldest and most well-known attractions at any festival - The Hammer and Bell thing. You always see huge men the size of trucks lifting these gigantuous mallets and smashing them down on a pin that is supposed to fling up and hit a bell. If you hit the bell, you win something. If you hit this bell three times, you won a G-String. This is obviously the reason why I chose to finally have a crack at this thing. I watched in despair as I saw countless men embarrasing themselves, only because of a simple technique flaw. Man after man would hold the mallet at the neck and hope for the best. Big swing no ding unfortunately. I'd love to say I was the man-of-the-day and showed them all how it really worked, but I only hit the bell twice out of three attempts, winning a rose for the lovely lady Sonja instead of a G-string for myself. Upon giving her this priceless gift, not only proving my mannishness and that she was one of the very few "Special" girls of the day to be so lucky to receive such a gift, she almost threw it back in my face telling me I picked the wrong gift, she wanted the orange teddy bear. Bloody women.
Since we left the campsite in the morning, I had never really felt 100% throughout the day, and I thought maybe it was because of all the food that was around, but as we walked away from Oktoberfest and into the city, my feeling great rate was dropping at a whopping speed. Since I hadn't had a proper beer since being in Munich again (Something not out of a plastic cup) I thought maybe this is what my body was trying to ask for. After checking out all the rides and eating as much food as we could without throwing it back up again, we decided to go for a walk through the city in search of one of the permanant beer halls. Hofbrauhaus was the option again, like my last visit to Munich. At the Hofbrauhaus, Sonja got her wheat beer and some traditional Bavarian food that I didn't like, Callum and myself got a litre of dark beer and Lucy had an apple strudel and a sneaky vodka when no-one was looking. The beer was great, but every couple minutes I had a hugr urge to violently throw up. While everyone was laughing, taking pictures and talking amongst each other, I found myself frantically looking around the table every couple minutes in search of something to empty my stomach into. Despite this frantic searching, I never found anything suitable, and resigned myself to the fact that if it came up, I would have to put it on my half consumed beer mass. This saddened me.
After maybe 30 minutes, I could no longer hold it down and politely excused myself to use the little boy's room. After 10 minutes I returned from having my head in a toilet feeling 50% better. It turns out the day before Lucy had suffered from a 24 hour bug or something and had spent most of her evening throwing up and feeling as down as I did. What a bummer! I really hoped it didn't pass onto anyone else, I didn't want it to circulate back around to me again. I finished my beer and off we went back to the campsite.
All the faces were the same from the day before and we spent the night sitting around a huge campfire made from treated wood, plastics and plenty of other things that shouldn't be burnt. More beer, more friends, more food and more sleep.
Finally we reached the day where we decided to take the plunge and to head into one of the beer tents. There are 10 beer tents at Oktoberfest, all that cater to a different audience. There was a tent for rich movie stars, rock stars and royalty, one for the dance crowd, one for the Bavarians, one for the tourists...The list went on. We chose one that catered for everyone. Bavaraians and other Germans, forgeiners, old people, young people. This was the mixed tent to put it simply. We arrived at 9am and secured our seat. With four people, it's next to impossible to find a seat for everyone after midday. We placed our order by 9:30, although the beer wasn't supposed to be served until 10am. Those beer wenches could carry A LOT of beer. Each mass (more commonly known amongst English speakers at a stein) on it's own probably weighes between 800g-1kg, and then when filled with beer, reaches almost 2kgs! Some of the wenches were carrying up to and some even over 10 masses at a time! Crazy!
Callum, Sonja and myself were on the beer, Lucy on the vodka and litre of softdrink. After three litres of the golden stuff, Callum and I decided to be real men and order the schweinshaxe. I've eaten this once before, and in English is called the pork knuckle. Bloody brilliant hunk o' meat I must say. Just saying the word schweinshaxe makes me feel manly. Last time I ate it, I absoultely hated the little squishy potato balls (That feel more like chewing on a stress ball) but it turns out Sonja loves the little buggers, so she ate them for me and I was left with my meat. Callum looked like a wild beast ripping the flesh of that bone and it made me very happy to see he was enjoying it.
The band (Which mostly sounds like drums and oom-pa-oom-pa-bum-bom-bop) was playing throughout the day and despite how brilliant they sounded, they weren't exactly the most outragous act on stage. The drummer looked like he'd mastered the ability of still playing drums while asleep. We were almost the first people in the building and scored the best seats we could, but because of stupid people booking in advance, the best seat available was exactly behind the band, so we just saw everyones backs and bums.
As the day went on, everything went up in volume and roudiness. As soon as the Germans started flooding the beer tent, all hell broke loose! The band were playing all sorts of traditional German music that they all seemed to know. A heap of Bavarians sat down at our table and before long everyone was speaking the same language. Luckily, Sonja taught me a German drinking song about egg and ham sandwiches and ice cold Bomalunda and I whipped that out much to others astonishment.
Sometimes, out of the blue, two men will stand up and everyone will start clapping and yelling encouragement/abuse and they will continue to scull an entire mass each. This is some kind of challenge, maybe to prove who is more manly. It's bloody brilliant to watch, but I do feel sorry for the loser. Regardless of how fast the winner drank his mass, the loser has to continue sculling all the way to the bottom, otherwise EVERYONE yells abuse at him. The ultimate shame at Oktoberfest is to take on such a challenge and give up half way.
By about 2ish, we were well on our way to drunkness, but at the same time, we were all getting really tired. After such a huge feast and five litres of beer, I think we were in the best state to just lie down somewhere and have a snooze. The start of the day was really quiet and it took a long time for it to start taking off, so by the time the party started, we were all just about ready for a sleep.
We weren't quite as tired as this guy though.
At that point, we decided to call it quits and jumped on a train which took us out to a small forest. We were sobering up by now, so we bought another couple beers for the trek and found ourselves amongst the trees and peeing in the bushes with the squirells.
Once again, back to the freezing cold tent and poisonous fire fumes.
To be continued.....
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