Oktoberfest - Munich

Munich Oktoberfest 2011 was quite an experience, made better because we had a group of friends to enjoy the festival with.
Great beer, yummy food, awesome drinking companions, party atmosphere  - this trip was memorable in many ways.
But some 'interesting' times on the plane both to and from London, witnessing some 'hard-line' police tactics on the streets of Munich and standing for a good 5 hours early on a Saturday morning to mind a table just to get access to beer - well at least all the good points counterbalanced the bad.



London City Airport
Our trip to Munich started off with a pint of Hoegaarden at the London City airport bar.  As this was our first Friday night flight, we had given ourselves ample time to get through the peak-hour rush. However, with all the extra contingency time we actually found ourselves with plenty of other people trying to pass time by plane watching and waiting for our departure gate to be called out. As the hours passed, we along with a few other passengers started to get a bit concerned when flights scheduled after ours started to show the 'final call' before we had started boarding. Then with 10 minutes before the scheduled departure time we were ushered into a small room and the announcement was made that the flight was overbooked - apparently quite a common occurrence in Europe.

Three volunteers were requested by the  Lufthansa staff to skip the flight and receive 250 Euro compensation each, fully paid accommodation and the 8am flight from Heathrow on Saturday morning. Had it not been for our pre-paid rooms and the plan to 'get up early' the next day for the beer festival, we would have been tempted by the offer - as the money was enough to buy rounds of drinks at the bar. In the end, a businessman volunteered (to the cheers of the group) and the last couple to check-in was booted out. Note to self, if you 'check in' to a flight with allocated seating and you are given the status of 'Standby' - start getting worried. The process of waiting for volunteers resulted in our flight being delayed upon arrival to Munich Airport.

Munich
We caught the train from the airport to the central station where the police were setting up a road block near the Oktoberfest fair ground. One cyclist who must have decided that the road block was too troublesome to detour around, sped through it and ignored all warnings from the police officer. In an attempt to 'stop him', the police officer grabbed the cyclist and it was unfortunate that the latter was not wearing a helmet and therefore struck the ground at full force, rolling with his bike for several meters. When the police officers went to check on him, it soon became apparent that he had suffered some serious injury and an ambulance was called. We decided not to stick around as there were sufficient bystanders who could probably speak German to act as witnesses.

Oktoberfest Day 1
The early morning start  at 6am was painful for all and there was a collective groan in our dormentary room that we shared with two other couples from Melbourne. It was even more painful for the guys who had indulged the night before in a late night drinking session. Our friend Amit, woke up a little worse for wear and had to stay in and recover whilst we all motivated ourselves to head out.

Most famous beer festival in the world

With the end-goal (beer) in our minds, we headed for the Theresienwiese area, stopping off for pastry and coffee before we queued for the best part of an hour in front of the Lowenbrau-Festhalle. Just before the tent opened, we received a message that a 'table' was being held by friends at the Hofbrau-Festzelt (HB tent). We changed plans and headed over there, just in time to assist the girls in fending off people trying to 'steal' the table. Note for future travellers, table space in a beer tent is prime real-estate as beer is only served 'at a table'.

The Hofbrau tent

Beer tents - packed with atmosphere

Crammed with people

Standing room only

Outsourcing Beer Ordering to the Swiss

The next part of the morning dragged on, and on and on. A total of 5 hours later, the Mayor of Munich stepped up to the stage to crack open the first keg, signalling the official start to Oktoberfest. At this point, we noticed that the patrons standing around our table had already started to receive beer from the beer wenches. Our initial reaction was one of frustration as we couldn't speak German to work out how to order beer. Luckily, a friendly group of Swiss (German speaking) tourists came to our aid and put down a dozen stein orders on our behalf. Our table then turned into a redistribution point for beer, as we and many others bought steins second-hand off our Swiss friend.

Tower of steins

Our Swiss friend redistributing beer

Olie testing out the biceps of the beer wenches
they can hold up to 12 steins in one go

Ein Prosit

And so the mood of the day got better - songs were sung, beer was drunk, we met some American military personnel and some German locals who translated the Bavarian drinking song "Ein Prosit" (A Toast) that was played every 15 minutes or so.

German LyricsEin Prosit, ein Prosit
Der Gemütlichkeit
Ein Prosit, ein Prosit
Der Gemütlichkeit.
OANS ZWOA DREI! G'SUFFA!

English Lyrics"A Toast"
A toast, a toast
To the coziness of it all
A toast, a toast
To the coziness of it all
ONE TWO THREE! DRINK UP!

After around 3pm, we headed back to the Hostel - exhausted and rather bloated after snacking on a very long hotdog. It was safe to say that we passed out quite quickly but despite the large numbers of steins consumed, woke up without a hangover - the virtues of the preservative free beer.

Bayerischer Donisl Restaurant

We met up with more of our Aussie expat friends for dinner at the Bayerischer Donisl restaurant in Marienplatz. Walking to / from the subway in the pouring rain was about all the sight-seeing of Munich city that we achieved all weekend. Dinner was a comforting roast-pork with potato and bread dumplings, and discovered Apfelschorle, a refreshing drink of 50-50 apple juice and mineral water, that was a good respite from the beer.

Our room-mates- Linddon, Emily, Sophanny and Amit

Olie wearing his PVC lederhosen

Oktoberfest Day 2

After an early night's rest, we woke up around 9am to enjoy the Hostel's buffet breakfast and headed back to the Oktoberfest compound in the unrelenting rain. We discovered after visiting a number of different tents, that the secret to enjoying Oktoberfest is definitely to 'start early' - as all the tables were full with no chance of us ordering beer. As a last resort, we headed back to the HB tent to try our luck at the standing room only tables. By chance, we noticed the waitress removing the 'reserved' signs (you have to reserve a table 12 months in advance) on a number of tables and we swooped, finding sufficient room to accommodate eight of us.. We then continued with the drinks and tried the traditional roast chicken - definitely recommended for future trips.

Roast chickens - delicious

Oktoberfest - an insight into Bavarian culture

Horse drawn beer cart

Leaving Munich
Unfortunately, time passed quite fast and we soon found it time to leave the beer hall and head back to the hostel to pack and head back to Munich airport. On route back, we snacked on a delicious pork knuckle, with Olie using his tipsy charm to sway the cook in passing over a bread roll for free. The train ride back to the airport was long slow and made us rather sleepy.

A further flight delay of almost half an hour, had us hanging around the airport once-again until we boarded for Heathrow and all seemed to be fine despite some acute periods of turbulence. That was until we flew over London city, and whilst admiring the sights and lights from the sky - the Shard, Westminister and the Eye, our approach into Heathrow was interrupted by the engines thrusting once again and we discovered that our pilot had aborted his landing. This meant an added delay of circling around once more, before we landed and seemingly could not find a gate to disembark. As a result, we exited the plane in the middle of the runway, away from any terminal and had to catch a bus back to the main building. A rather eventful way to end our hectic but enjoyable weekend at Oktoberfest.

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