Oktoberfesssht

In a word "Crowded". In a few more words "really crowded, huge, lots of beer, lots of food". This is Oktoberfest!! What I was envisaging as a homecoming or pilgramage turned out to be more of a wash out. It was cold and wet and near impossible to get into any of the big beer "tents". (We have to use the word tent loosely as these things are 3 stories high and hold 10000 people). However one cannot put a dampener on the atmosphere. It really is quite a party complete with amusement park!

Tammie and I were up bright and early on Saturday morning to depart from London and Prague respectively to arrive in Munich as early as possible. We had managed to score a hotel just around the corner from the festivities so we only had a short walk once we had checked in. To behold the Weis'n is quite something. So many people, so many tents, so little time. After a small scouting mission we managed to get into one of the smaller beer halls, where we were seated with some natives (germans that is) and after a brief moment of silence, and a few loosening ales the conversation was flowing in some sort of broken German/English hybrid.



Fast forward 3 similar hours and we decided to bid our new friends farewell and venture on to one of the bigger tents - there in lies our first error. We trudged over to the Hoffbrau tent to find a queue about 20 people deep and 4 people wide infront of every door and showing no signs of moving. We waited for about 30 mins in which time the only forward movement was brought about by other people leaving the queue. A short while later we too gave up - and decided that maybe we'd had just the right amount of alcohol, coupled with the lack of sleep the night before and the lack of food during the day, to warrant a short nap back at the hotel - there in lies mistake number 2. We had our kip and woke up to our horror to discover it was actually midnight and that the day was over, so proceeded to sleep again till the early morn.



Day 2 - the reckoning. Well we were a reckoning that we would get into a hall today. But we were wrong. We got there early (11am) but already the no vacancy signs were out and queues forming. We sat outside in the rain at a smaller tent again and had half a chicken each, which was really good, and a couple of beers, before going off to join a queue. After waiting in the rain for 2 hours we gave up again and managed to get a seat in a smaller beer hall again and talk to a few more germans. Around this time we decided that Oktoberfest was not going to be our friend and that we would be better experiencing the original Hoffbrauhaus beer hall in the city. We ate, drank and talked to some locals (who actually turned out to be Czech SAP practitioners, what are the odds!!) before retiring at a reasonable hour (11.30pm) as we had flights to catch the next morning.

Day 3 - Monday 7.20am. Bugger. We were late - very late. Tammie has approx 20 mins to make her flight. No Chance. After the initial shock of somehow sleeping in, Tammie managed to secure herself another flight later in the day as I packed as fast as I could, and jumped a cab to the airport (I still had an hour). I managed to get to the check in counter with seconds to spare only to be told "No need to hurry your flight has been delayed by about 2 hours". Bugger.