A liftime dream of mine was to attend Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany. This is the worlds biggest beer festival and I really enjoy beer. I had no idea the pure size of this place or actually what it is like. You cannot even com close to fathoming this event. I will attempt to put it into words. There are 13 beer tents, each tent could hold 2500 plus people at max capacity. Around each tent was outside seating which you could probably another thousand at least around them. Those are only the people around the tents. You also got thousands of people who brought there own and sat around the place. So on the biggest day of the Oktoberfest (the Saturday we there) we guessed that from 11:00am, 2 hours it opens till 11:00pm closes minimum 50,000 people drunk the entire time. With all the people coming and going in and out and around that is a low estimate.
To put that in perspective, Ross-Aid Stadium (Purude University) seats 62500 at maximum capacity. Image ever person in the stadium drunk, and I mean not just tipsy, I mean hammered. It is unfathomable.
The beer tents are only about 1/3 or the festival grounds. There is another 2/3 of a carnvial with rides and games and such and that is packed as well. This was so big.
But it was good times. When they drink, they sing and toast and eat pretzels, like huge pretzels. They have since of family pride, community, and nationality. They have sence of oneness. They is just so much joy and happiness. Almost no fights or violence. They are all just there having a good time. It was a beautiful sight.
It just continues to remind me how much more history and nationality and traditions other countries have that America lacks. We have ours, but we dont really have the same sense of of commonalty. I think it based around the fact of how spread out we are, and how many mini-cultures we have in our country. This is as an example is college and local sports in comparison too these other counrties have alot more pride in national sports.
Also our nationality is never challenged as much since we are not at tightly pack together over here as they are. They can travel to country to country for a day, while we have to take a day to even get across our counrty.
But enough of the rambling, onto the story. My plane trip sucked. It was 3 hours late getting off the runway at Ohare, so I missed my connection flight. Because i missed that, i would miss my train and miss my meeting point with Keune. So after a very painful hour trying to track him down, we finally met. I through my bag down in the hotel room and heading down to the Oktoberfest.
Oktoberfest is crazy. You are unable to get a beer without having a table inside, or outside the tent. But thanks to Neil's (Keune's co-worker) ability to smooze the women, his ability puts Keune to shame, we got a table and some liter beers. We had 4,why 4 because we set our goal at 4. We were hammered. 4 is a gallon of beer. Which is equal to 10 2/3 normal beers. Which is equal too 8 tall boys. By the way this was all on a 3.5 hour span. Lets just say we were drunk.
The next day we were all dragging obviously. One of us had gotten sick, it wasn't me. There was a trail on the floor from a bed to the bathroom. We checked out the next day, but because of that there was an extra 20 Euro cleaning fee.
So saturday was a light day. We went to the Hofbrauhaus. That place is awesome. No matter how much we were dragging we had to have a beer there. We walked around the festival a little, went on the big ferris wheel. We then went and got a beer away from the Oktoberfest and watched the thousands of people coming and going. It was relaxing.
On Sunday, we hung out and walked around other places in Munich, other historical places and what not. The place is just full of history, but alot of people lose sight of that because of the many beer halls and Oktoberfest. It was really nice old city. We then left for Austria at the end of the day. Salzburg is a town on the boarder of the two countries. It is the home of the Sound of Music and Motzart. It was a touristy town. It was in the mountains which gave me my first veiw of the mountains. It was a nice get-a-way from the craziness of the other city. We say a fortress, some trick founrtains, drank some monk beer, saw some motzart things. At night we went to the Irish Pub. I drank guiness, did some Irish dances, listenes to some good music. I was sent onto the dance floor to save this girl, when I got devoured by a not very attractive one. It was overall a good evening.
My last day was pretty much a nothing day. Had to travel back to Munich, said bye to Keune and Neil. Walked around the Oktoberfest a little more. Went and got and beer and watch some soccer with a Check Republic guy who was passing through town on business. It was relaxing enough and I did not drink too much. There are so many other stories and things that happen, but if i wrote about them all, I would writing a novel. I am annoyed though about people asking me if I had good time. It is such an empty question, because the since of good time is different per person. Also how can you not when you travel and see new things and can go and see what you desire. All I know was this was a great experience and one more place to check off my list.
Other Articles
Sweden:
http://www.worldisround.com/articles/14753/
Russia and Finland:
http://www.worldisround.com/articles/16051/
Dublin:
http://www.worldisround.com/articles/73937/
Other Ireland:
http://www.worldisround.com/articles/97678/
London and Northern Ireland:
http://www.worldisround.com/articles/97679/
Belgium and Dublin at Christmas:
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