Oktoberfest!

Friday, September 24 - Sunday, September 26 2010

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Oktoberfest, the largest fair in the world, which is said to host over six million people each year.  It's most notable feature is the emphasis on drinking beer out of liter-sized mugs in large "tents" (huge open barn-like buildings) along with dressing up in classic Bavarian outfits called lederhosen (for men) and dirndl (for the ladies).  This is pretty much the extent of what we knew going into this weekend on our 3-day trip to Munich, Germany.  You might remember from our previous post that Dave was fighting off a pretty bad cold the week of our trip.  On Thursday morning Dave was about to call off the trip until we realized it was too late to get all of our money back.  Who needs health?  Let's go have fun! :)  We left early Friday morning by train and after about 7 hours, arrived in Munich at around 2pm. 

The theme of many of our trips this summer / early fall was booking on relatively short notice and not being 100% prepared (or even 50% really).  A little bit of “winging it” hadn't hurt us so far, but we were afraid it might have finally caught up with us on this trip.  We found out on the train ride up there that in order to get into the large tents, which is a major part of the experience, you needed to have reservations and that these were often snatched up many months in advance (and can be fairly expensive, up to $100 a head!).  Pretty much everyone we talked to gave us the impression that we would be screwed without a tent reservation, except maybe if we arrived at the crack of dawn and got in line for the earliest session-- this quickly became the plan for Saturday.  For Friday, however, we didn't have much of anything planned so we decided to go scope out the scene and see if we could pick up any tips on our own.

The Munich subway system is second to none -- very expansive and timely.  From our hotel, we made the 30 minute trek into town, surrounded more and more by lederhosen and dirndl the closer we got.  As we exited the train, there was an immediate pile up of hundreds of people going the same direction as us and we started to realize how big this thing was going to be.  The walk to and from the fairgrounds was about 10 minutes but wasn’t without its entertainment as well (case in point on the right).

We finally got to the fair entrance and couldn’t help but crack a little smile when we saw the entrance sign (shown above).  First thing’s first – we needed a bratwurst or a beer (preferable both)!  For as big of a festival as Oktoberfest is, it’s pretty tough to get a beer – apparently they only sell within the tents or beer gardens.  Ok, beer aside, we settled on food first.  We got a foot long dog and some sort of pork curry bbq skewer.  Yum.  As you can see from the photo on the right, this place is huge, so it took us a little while to scout it out.  We stopped by a few tents looking for any chance at all to get in.  Didn’t look promising.  We finally decided to hit up a small beer garden which didn’t have much of a line – it turned out to be the best decision we made all weekend!

After a little shuffling, we were seated at an eight person table right next to three Dutch guys, roughly our age, named Lyonel, Owen, and Joost (pronounced "yost").  When Dave told them he is Dutch and our last name is Visser, they immediately greeted him in their native language.  Dave quickly explained he wasn’t that kind of Dutch. :)  Regardless, they were extremely nice, spoke great English, and we hit it off right away -- little did we know how much fun we would have together over the next couple of days.  We ordered a round, said a big cheers and soaked it all in.

Unfortunately, less than 5 minutes after we sat down, the rain started (the forecast had called for rain but not until Saturday).  Great, we finally found a place that let us in, we just sat down and now we have to drink fast and get back to the train.  Not so fast!  Apparently the Germans know the concept of keeping customers in their seats – not 30 seconds after the rain started the waiters were Johnny-on-the-spot, quickly passing out ponchos!  Yes it was raining hard, but how could we leave after that?

After hanging out in the beer garden for an hour or two and meeting plenty of colorful people, the Dutchmen were hungry so we tagged along to find some food.  We split a whole roasted duck between us (delicious!) and they quickly decided it was time to get into a tent.  We were skeptical of course, but what are you going to do, not try?  Apparently they had the inside scoop that a couple tents stay open late and that people tend to clear out towards the end of the night when they’ve had a little too much, uh, fun.  Sure, sounds like a plan.  We made our way over to the Lowenbrau tent and stood outside one of the exits looking as pathetic and eager as possible in front of the security guys.  Owen and Joost were chatting it up with them, but with about 20 other eager people at our door (and 20 at each of the other 8 doors) we weren’t too optimistic.  That’s when it happened.  Out of seemingly nowhere, one of the waitresses came up to the door and told the security guards that the five of us have a place at a table.  What?!  The security guards (who are on a serious power trip) didn’t even want to believe it.  It was true though – we got in the tent!

Once inside we instantly saw why this was the place to be.  It’s hard to fully describe in words so watch the video below.  It’s basically a large open room with hundreds of 8-person tables packed with about 14 people each—people from all corners of the world, standing on benches, singing and having a great time.  To our surprise, this particular tent was playing classic hits, popular in the U.S.  Songs like, “Sweet Caroline”, “We are the Champions”, “What’s going on”, surprisingly even “Angels” and "Country Roads"; of course we sung along at the top of our lungs-- especially when they played a few Beatles songs.  It was a trip and we were so happy to have gotten the opportunity to experience it firsthand.

At around 11pm they kicked everyone out.  Our Dutch friends invited us for the after-party, but we were exhausted and Dave was still feeling under the weather and wanted to make sure he had a little strength for the next day.  We left that night excited that we had met some great friends, gotten into a tent and perhaps more excited that we didn’t have to get up early the next morning!

On Saturday we decided to spend a little time outside of the festival and see some of the Munich sites.  We got into the Munich city center and quickly fell in love with the architecture that surrounded us.  Right outside the subway stop is Neues Rathaus ("New Town Hall"-- photo to the left), magnificent to say the least.  We wandered around a little bit, stopping for lunch which included 6 types of German sausage along with pork knuckle (better than it sounds).

We visited the Residenzmuseum, which was the principal palace and seat of government of Bavarian rulers from 1508 until 1918, when it was turned into a museum.  It was an extremely interesting experience, mostly because much of the museum had been damaged in World War II.  There were sections of the museum where entire rooms had been completely destroyed.  They had done a good job of rebuilding but certain things proved irreplaceable (i.e. large murals and parts of sculptures which had been broken off in the explosions).  It’s hard to imagine that such devastation took place less than 75 years ago!  Architecture aside, we were lucky to stumble across a trio of performers practicing in one of the palace’s chapels, for what we assumed was a concert later that evening.  They were playing in a marble room with amazing acoustics which made their trio sound like a full orchestra.  We recorded a bit of it, you can see and hear it below.  We could have stayed there all night listening, but alas the museum had closing hours.  LAME.

One of the most historically significant places we visited was the Hofbräuhaus, known as where the Nazi party was started.  We’re not sure if there is a secret back room where all the chicanery happened, because the house is just another large beer hall!  This place was clearly more traditional-German than the tent we visited the night before.  They had great authentic German songs being played by what looked to be authentic instruments.  There was even a whip show (see below)!  We stayed for awhile at the Hofbräuhaus then headed out to the festival to meet our Dutch friends-- they had invited us back out to the Lowenbrau tent from the night before.

As I’m sure you can gather, we had a great time!  Made some great friends!  We look forward to visiting our Dutch friends when we travel to The Netherlands.

Ang did well with the beer, even though it was not Mexican beer and there were no limes at her disposal.  Dave made sure to spoil her though with an abundance of giant pretzels (we had 5 over the course of 3 days).  It’s the simple things that make her happy and Dave appreciates that every day. :)

So, that’s Munich – a great city to visit with or without Oktoberfest.  We will clearly be going back for lots more fun!