Oktoberfest 2005

I have no photos yet, but they are forthcoming, so you'll have to content yourself with text rather than images. I've always been more of a radio show girl than a TV show girl.

On Sept 16th, I flew to Munich Germany to meet Melanie, Hippie, Ed, Cathy, and Mel's parents for Oktoberfest. The real one, which, yes, is in September because Oktoberfest means Harvestfest or something like that, not October. It began as a wedding celebration of Crown Prince Ludwig to Princess of Therese in 1810. The citizens of Munich were invited to the 5 day celebrations (because when royalty marries, it's best to invite the subjects to celebrate. Less rioting and revolting that way) and a tradition was born. But they were married in October, so I don't know when or why it was moved to September, but it is. Although one source states it's because of the weather, which I tend to believe because Tomas, who you'll meet later, confirmed this to us in a round about way of speaking.

Ok, so Oktoberfest. We were all separately advised to join the St. Augstiner Bierhall, everyone said it was the best beer, so at 8am, we dutifully lined up outside the door in the rain and early morning mist. Before you denounce us as hard-core alcolholics (you'll want to save that one for much, much later in our story) we were far from the first people there. In fact, we were lucky to have arrived early enough to stand inside the beerhall courtyard rather than out on the Grand Avenue of Beer Tents. We'd been further advised to go early and we did. The tents officially open at 10, the first keg gets tapped at noon in a big celebration, so we settled in. The locals (really starting to hate that term) were all dressed in liederhosen and traditional dresses, having their morning beer and pretzels. No really, they were eating bread, cheese, and pretzels for breakfast. Like a ball game pretzels, not a bag of pretzels. It's really strange to see a city of young people running around in leather or suede liederhosen and those old beer fraulin dresses. They all have them, custom made, I'd imagine. Maybe not, but really, how many of you have a traditional costume in your closet you can throw on at the last minute? (I do, it's called jeans and a tee-shirt, American Standard) Munich is a pretty city, with lots of old wonderful buildings and seeing those costumes running among the city was really amazing. Very easy to imagine it being 1800's Munich. Anyway, back to the beer hall. It was drizzley and overcast and chilly (16 c) but since everyone was all smushed together, it was quite warm while we waited. At some point, a side door was opened and many, many people rushed in before the staff stopped the invasion. Included in this surge of gate crashers was Hippie, who quickly realized it was his job to secure us a table and then quickly realized it was a futile effort. You can only be served at a table; there are no bars, no standing and grabbing a passing waitress, so getting a table is crucial and we failed to get a reservation for one back in July. Optimists we are, we went anyway. After a few more breaches of the beer tent, the rest of our party managed to get into the tent. Now when I say tent, you must imagine this: it's a beer hall that holds 6000 people. And there are 14 tents, ours not the largest by far. Have a look here: http://www.oktoberfest.de/en So after scoping out the main seating area, we none of us secure a table. Germans are surly in the morning. So we end up standing beside the front door trying to decide what to do. After much grumbling, bitching, and not-fair-ing, we decided that we need to stay put because the throng at the front door had reached epic proportions and we'd all rather be warm,and sober than wet, cold and sober. It was further decided that the only way we were getting any beer at all was for us to make friends with a table so they could order for us. You can drink standing, the waitresses just can't serve you. Hello loophole. So Melanie and Cathy start looking for "a table with mostly men and then send Beth in". Yep, my new nickname is Bait. So we camped out beside just such a table and tried to initiate contact. Eye contact, some initial flirting, things going well. Except they don't speak English. Sort of crucial to the plan... And then 4 fraulins sat themselves down, so yeah, time to cut bait. Twila (Mel's mom) and I take a walk around the tent looking for another table, preferably one in a much warmer location than the front door, and find a prime spot in front of a table of 10 men. Bingo. We move the group and begin trying to break into their group. No dice. No eye contact, no flirting, no nothing. And then I take a good long look. And realize they're all gay. Yep, 1000 tables and I find the one that's gay. sigh... But that's ok. Gay men love me and as Hippie stated, I just needed the other set of feminine wiles. Just then the ceremony started. A parade complete with the oompah band and flags headed round the hall and ended at the raised platform in the center of the hall. They tapped the keg, the beers rolled out and I sprang into action. After living with Flatmate Suzie for 8 months, I decided her U2 approach was just what I needed. (for those out of the loop, she talked her way into the VIP section of the concert. Free.) I walked up to one of the boys, looked up, smiled sweetly and asked "How do I get a beer?". Big smile back down at me (Germans are really tall...) followed by "You wait right here and a very nice man will bring you one. How many do you need?", 7 please. Big laugh followed by 7 beers. I love it when I succeed! :-) We spent the rest of the afternoon with Tomas Klaus and his friends, who have permanent reservations for that table every year. They've been coming there for 10 years and always have the same waiter, who is one of their old friends as well. It was great fun, I have to say. Beer count for Mom: 2 1/2. The beer was much stronger as has been reported, and we were advised to drink less than we thought we should. And since they are also much larger than normal... well. I'd been told not to anger the beer waitress and now I understand why. I had a beer injury from holding my one stein (bruise on my hand, swelling at the thumb). They routinely carry 12. Without lower back pain. We made a game out of counting they steins whizzing past. That's a talented bunch of fraulins... Every half hour, the band would play this anthem and the entire hall would stand, sing and toast the band before getting back to drinking. We played along. No idea what we were toasting to, I like to pretend it was to me for scoring us beer. :-)

Tomas explained a few things to us while we drank.

1- Hippie put down more beers than the average American tourist and held his own admirably.
2- Usually the weather is better than it was. It gets rainy and then clears up for the 3 weeks of Oktoberfest and then gets crappy again.
3- The Augstiner Bierhall rarely sees foreigners, it's the most local of the tents. It's also the most traditional of the tents. Yea Us!
4- The beer is free on DBA, which we flew to Naples, and he works for.
5- The music is traditional until 6 pm to encourage less drunken revelry. Not sure how that helps, but there you go.

It was a really fun day and we stumbled home at, ummm, at... well, the oompah was still going, so we failed to meet our goal of making it to 8pm, which we all realized was ridiculous goal in the first place. 8 hours of drinking would have possible, had we been swilling Coors Light, but Augstiner, really good by the way, was just a tad stronger. Ok, it was much stronger. I've been in training for 7 months in Ireland and I can put down my fair share of Guinness, but 2.5 of those German puppies put me over the edge. I was happily passed out by 6pm. It was great fun I have to admit, but I'm glad we only did one day. I'd absolutely go again, but it's really the sort of thing you do with a good group of friends for one day and then you move on. Next year anyone??