Madness in München

Well folks.... here is the lowdown from my trip to Oktoberfest..... I was going to say Munich, but I only saw the road between the Hostel we were staying at and the Oktoberfest beer tents, bar a 2 hour trip into town to kill some time before our flight home.....

To explain Oktoberfest its like a massive fairground with massive beer tents that you go to and....surprise drink beer out of big massive litre beer steins. You have to be seated to be served and you have to tip the waiters so they come back so you basically have to get there really early (ie queue up before it opens, which means very early morning starts). Basically beer and pretzels for breakfast. Theres an oompah band (big brass band playing) and ever so often they play this song called Ein Prosit (Cheers on the friendliness or words to that effect) and everyone goes mental and stands on their seats and swings their steins.

SO.............

Friday (Freitag)
Up early to meet Cest and Tim at London City Airport (which is kinda annoying as I only live about 20 minutes on the tube from Heathrow but not a bother.....) leave my place, walk up the road and discover its been cordoned off by the cops. Hmmmmm its still dark and I have my big pack and the cops like 'no I have to walk back towards Northfields station. Poos... so I haul my pack and head down to Northfields station- those in the know will realise how stressed I get.... so i get halfway down my road and its cordoned off... AGAIN! So i talk to the cops and they let me through and I leg it to Northfields (extra 10 minutes walk). Getting increasingly flustered, I immediately get on the westbound tube, instead of the eastbound for town and ended up the next stop along in Boston Manor Rd... two stops back off South Ealing. Grrrrrrrr!Turns out that there was a fire close to our place and there was gas involved or something. The cops knocked on all the doors on our street and people were told that they either stayed inside for the day, or went to work and didn't return until 6am! So really I picked a great day to go!

Anyway it kinda went like this.....Airport, breakfast, flight delayed, get on plane, take off, get to Munich Airport, catch train to city centre, offload packs at hostel, meet up with others and go to Hippodrome beer tent, drink lots of beer, bed (in that exact order) followed.

I quickly came to the conclusion that night that Oktoberfest wasn't only about meeting people, drinking beer and eating pretzels, but also trying to keep away from dodgy Italians and buying tacky hats (Please refer to the Flikr link for photos).

The Hippodrom tent was wicked- we met up with Cest's british friends she worked with in NZ- Liam, Luc, Lindsey, Andy, Suz and Sara, and pretty much drank in the beer garden until closing, and stumbled home. We sat with some oldie Italian guys and had some wicked conversations in broken english/german. Gotta love it! Probably the most odd thing of the night was biting Cest on the arm in my drunken state rather too hard, giving her a huge bruise. To punish myself, in my drunk wisdom I also bit myself and now have a large bruise, with people asking how I did it, which is rather embarrasing to explain. Yes Im a biter! The other funny thing is that the bruise is in the shape of the Wu Tang logo! hehehehehehehehe. I definitely remember it being a lovely warm night anyway.


Saturday (Samstag)
Woke up, very hungover (Hippodrome beer, therefore, is not recommended!), and looked around the dorm and realised that our group had accquired two Italians and Andy, who was supposed to be sleeping in another room. Quite funny. Anyway it was all urgency because it was Saturday, the biggest day of the week, so we all dragged our sorry arses down for the 9am opening of the Fischer Veroni tent.
So it was beer and a pretzel for breakfast- it did not cure my hangover or make me feel any better, and as a result I was on rather poor form : (. I managed 2 steins, hung out there for the day, but sadly went to bed at 8pm that was it really..... but, my friends, the best was yet to come....

Sunday (Sonntag)
The bestest, and coolest day of the trip! Absolute gold! Brilliant fun! I think it was karma or something, because we got to the Lowenbrau tent just after opening at 10am, and couldn't find a table anywhere. We had almost resided to the fact that we would have to squeeze onto someone elses table, when we were approached by one of the waitresses saying that she had got a couple of seats saved if we wanted it, as she was stuck serving dodgy italians the previous day, and didn't want a repeat. So she really did us one HUGE favour- and best of all it was really close to the oompah band yeeeeeeeha (even though there was a big table full of fanatics there, they are the Aussie equivalent of the beige brigade)! Of course we had to tip her, but our table steadily turned into the party table as the others that slept in joined us. The beer went down far too easily for 10am in the morning, the band struck up, a crazy chicken hat was purchased and the rest is just a big drunk blur of happiness. Highlights at some point include:

• Signing a chest of some fanatics guy
• Singing Hey Jude, full bore with everyone at our table standing on the table, I think....
• smoking cigars with some German oldies, discussing the finer points of the concentration camp, Dacau
• Meeting some Aussie girl who lived down the road from me and constantly saying that we were neighbours (apparently she was giving me funny looks!)
• Meeting a Aussie guy Shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaane Murray (hows that for a good Aussie name!) who had legally changed his name to Prudence Murray to win some university competition
• Leaving the Lowenbrau tent at closing (13.5 hours of drinking later) and going for a midnight curry at the Restaurant across from the hostel
• Just about pissing myself laughing after the curry by singing that 'heeeeeeeeeeeeeey, hey baby and instead of doing the ooooh haaaa bit blowing my nose instead. Nuff said.

Monday (Montag)

Hungover, sleepy and looking forward to going home. Went into Munich city to try and find an old beer tent but gave up, had some food and went back to the hostel, picked up the bags and headed off the airport.

Soooooooo much good times, I'm just so tired now! Go to Oktoberfest everyone!!!!!