Observations of Munich

First off, let me give kudos to my wife for being so great at keeping up with the blog and getting posts and pictures up usually a day after we come back. I’m generally ready for a ‘vacation after the vacation’ and would put this off far longer.

But I thought I’d chime in with some of my own comments on our recent trip. I was expecting Oktoberfest to be a huge piss up, which it was, but I wasn’t expecting it to be much more than that. The city of Munich was cool – it’s the 3rd largest in Germany (after Hamburg and Berlin – I wouldda though Frankfurt was bigger, but apparently its just the airport and finance that is huge there). Munich is known for having a very high standard of living, which becomes apparent as you walk around town and notice how many ;yuppie’ style shops and cafes there are. The city itself was heavily bombed (71 air raids during WWII) so many of the buildings are new-ish, though they were all built in traditional architecture (for the most part) so the town doesn’t look ultra modern (like Glasgow does).


The subway in Munich is pretty good, but man, it just feels German. The trains are old-style boxy cars with 1940s/50s wood paneling finish inside, and the doors need to be manually opened by flipping a latch and pushing it (complete opposite of high tech Tokyo). That said, the trains were really comfy since they are big and a pleasure to ride on. We bought a 3 day pass, but the system is all honour based (like GO transit), and we were never checked the whole time we were there.

Germans, at least in Munich but I suspect this is true of most of the country, are really good about being bilingual – everyone we met spoke at least broken English, if not better. And as Astrid said, everyone was really friendly (except for that waiter at lunch who Astrid D had a row with!).

Despite the fact the festival is underpinned by the primary activity of drinking beer, it is very well run and fairly pleasant given the sheer size of the event. In 2010 Oktoberfest will celebrate 200 years since Crown Prince Ludwig (later King Ludwig I) was married and the first Oktoberfest festival occurred, so the Germans know a thing or two about managing the worlds largest fair. I’d highly recommend you check it out sometime if you can – 4 days was a good length of time to go – any longer and your liver wouldn’t be too happy.

Syd.

The Misadventures of Squirt and the Gang at Oktoberfest

We did the iconic European adventure this weekend - a trip to the beer drenched tents, all the bratwurst one could eat, more drunks than you can count, and even vomit-inducing rides in the fairgrounds of the opening weekend of the largest festival in the world - Oktoberfest in Munich Germany. ;o)

To prepare for the event we purchased matching tees with drunk looking turtle logos that said: UK Expats Drinking Team - Slow & Steady. The backs of our shirts had our nicknames (Syd: Sporty, Astrid: Silly, Katie: Smiley, Me: Spilly). We thought the fact that we were UK Expats was self-explanatory since we all live in the UK but were born elsewhere...apparently this was very confusing for many people when they talked to us as they were disappointed when we didn't have British accents! hmmm...
When we arrived at the 'Oktoberfest area' we basically were walking onto a fairground - with food stalls, souvenir booths and rides for as far as the eye could see. We had an affinity towards the bumper cars - where drunk driving is legal and encouraged! We were feeling peckish so we went into a tent/restaurant where we sat at a large table with other random people and the beer drinking and massive chicken eating began! We loved the design of the place with Ammer chickens everywhere - Ammer is a roast chicken chain and they definitely had fun with this place!
The beer 'tents' were really large buildings made of temporary materials that are erected (and subsequently destroyed) each year for the event. Each tent is owned by a large Bavarian brewery (i.e. Lowenbrau, Augustiner, Hofbrau, Spaten and Paulener) and each tent holds roughly 6000 drunk revellers!
Our first night we waited in a small line to get into Augustiner, which was a more traditional tent. You can't get a beer until you get a table, and you can't get a table unless you befriend people to share a table with them and/or find an empty vacated space. We happened to find the latter after 15 minutes of frustrated looking. The band was elevated in the middle of the tent with a large wreath-like structure suspended above them. They played mostly traditional 'oompah' music but every once in a while would throw in a popular rock song (Bon Jovi tended to be choice!). It wasn't long before we were dancing on the benches along with the rest of them.
Squirt, our mascot turtle got in on the action with the beer and the massive pretzels - mmmmm.

Approximately 550,000 litres of beer are consumed during the 18 day festival. All beer is served in 1L steins that are frickin heavy if you have to carry multiples! The waitresses all wore special wristbands to allow them to carry 5 steins in each hand at once! As solid as the steins were, Astrid and Katie managed to break one through a very vivacious round of 'probsts' (cheers)!
The music ended at 11 and they basically kicked everyone out. That meant more bumper cars! yay!

The next day people had warned us to go to the beer tents early (at 10am) to get in for the day, but the thought of drinking that early just turned all of our stomachs so we decided to check out 'BMW Welt (World)' instead. Which was a massive interesting building (likeness to Guggenheim) filled with cars and salespeople and facts about 'beamers.'
Syd was super chuffed, but unfortunately was with 3 girls who were not, so only had 30 minutes to walk around and check out his future vehicle. ;o) We took the opportunity to get artistic with photo opps!
We had heard that we needed to visit MarienPlatz where there was the famous Rathaus-Glockenspiel and the historical Hofbrauhaus beer hall. We walked around here for a good while and then enjoyed the live music, pretzels and people at Hofbrauhaus to take in the German experience.
That night we went to an outdoor Spaten biergarten to enjoy beer while trying to decide our next course of action. It ended up finding us. When Katie and I went to the public toilets just outside the next beer tent - Hacker Festzelt, we heard lots of fun music so we went in and checked it out - crowds of people, rock music and NO line! That was the place for us! This time around I befriended a nice German boy named Jan and he let us dance on his benches. We soon took over the table, but were good fun that the group didn't mind. The tent ceiling was painted like sky and clouds and starts and it felt so whimsical and fun - like a Bavarian Heaven. We couldn't believe some of the songs that the band knew and played (including 'summer of 69' a good ole Canuck fave). They started Sweet Home Alabama, and it ending up being the Kid Rock version too - sweet.

The girls met some boys this night, and we ended up going to a club until the wee hours of the morning so we could dance all night. Syd, Astrid and Katie managed to all lose their hats at the club so don't have souvenirs of the fest, but oh well! I guess I chose a good day to leave mine at the hotel! We had sooo much to drink on Sunday night...Needless to say, we spent the next day shopping and taking it easy...;o)

Observations:

Germans really know how to do public toilets! They were free (major bonus in Europe), constantly cleaned, and NEVER out of toilet paper though they were in massive use during the whole festival. We were very impressed and wish that some of that influence can go to other festivals of the world.

Everyone is sooo nice and in such cheerful moods. Beer was being spilled over everywhere and everyone, and no one minded one bit. They even laughed off people vomiting under the tables!

The make up of the nationality of people at the fest surprised us. We expected there to be a lot more tourists, but the breakdown of people were roughly 70% Bavarian (locals from Munich and surrounding area), 15% from overseas (including other European countries), and 15% from other parts of Germany. There were so many people in Lederhosen (leather pants with suspenders) and drindls (revealing dresses with aprons and frilly skirts) that spoke strong bavarian german. Thankfully we had a 'mole' in the group as Astrid speaks German and she was able to call on people that talked about us 'tourists' and that shut them up real quick knowing that they were being understood - not so fun to talk about people if they know what you are saying!