I'm starting to feel like the common theme for every trip I go on is Food & Drink. As you might know, Oktoberfest is mainly known as a beer festival but I was quick to learn that it's more than that. Here's a little background:
The original Oktoberfest in October 1810 was held in honour of the wedding between Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria and Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen, For five full days, the burghers of Munich were invited to eat, drink and be merry, and enjoy parades involving kettle drums and music, shooting displays and a horse race around a meadow on the edge of town. Such a good time was had by all that it was decided to stage the race (and the accompanying indulgence) again the following year, and then the next and the next. There has been the occasional pause in proceedings (usually at times of war), but this year will mark the 181st time the Oktoberfest is being held. The main Oktoberfest is held on the original meadow, named, in honour of Ludwig’s bride, the Theresienwiese (shortened to the “Wiesn”), a short tram ride from the centre of Munich.
Other than the numerous beer tents, there is lots of rides and different types of food outside. It's basically Playland but bigger, more German, and with beer tents.
This trip was booked with BritBound who partnered with Topdeck so I basically didn't do any of the planning for this trip. We left London Friday afternoon on a coach travelling to Munich. It was 18 hours... but in all seriousness, it wasn't as bad as it sounds. The coach contained about 50 BritBounders, so basically all Canadians, Aussies, and Kiwis living in London on a visa...I think that makes for a pretty good bus ride and pretty good trip! Saturday morning, we arrived at our campsite in Munich and it was a little hectic because everyone got next to no sleep on the bus and we had 20 minutes to settle in, change, shower, do whatever you need to do before we headed out on our walking tour of Munich. Luckily, tents were already set up for us so we just had to unload our stuff and get changed. The boys got into their Lederhosen and the girls got into their Dirndls (not everyone dressed up).
We then headed off to the centre of Munich where we got a bit of a walking tour from our Topdeck tour guide. I'll touch on a few of the sights we saw later as we revisited some of them on Monday. After a couple of hours of walking around, we made our way over to Oktoberfest. Just want to mention as well that the weather was absolutely fantastic on this trip. Not a cloud in the sky and it was hot! When we finally got to Oktoberfest, we all tried our best to stay together, even though our tour guide advised against it. We arrived there at about 11:30am and the festival was packed already. We eventually did split up as we entered the grounds of one of the tents and there was no space at any of the tables. A few people snagged some empty spots and then everyone naturally split up into different groups. My group decided to go to a different location and ventured over to a small restaurant where we had our first beers. After, we walked around, got some food (sausage I might add), played some bumper cars, and then the rest of the night was pretty much food and beer around the festival.
The next day, a large number of us decided to go to the festival early to go get a spot in one of the tents. The bonus of the trip being Topdeck was that we got a free breakfast to wake up to. My friends and I arrived at our choice of tent, Lowenbrau, at 9am, ready to get started. Don't laugh, there was plenty of people already there! Oktoberfest is crazy on weekends too so once you decide to leave a tent to possibly explore more of the festival, your chances of getting back into that same tent later to re join your buddies is slim. So basically, we were in for the long haul. Don't forget, they serve full litres of beer, not pints. That's about as much as I'll say about that day as you might imagine the rest. It's all good fun though, as the day progressed, the whole tent would just break out in song or dance many times and it is a neat experience.
Monday was a bit more tame as a few of us walked more around Munich, although saw a lot of the same things we saw the first day. At 11am, there is little show of these tiny statues in the Town Hall dancing around. This is called the Rathaus-Glockenspiel and dates back to 1908. Not sure if you can see them in the picture but they're higher up.
We also went for lunch at the famous Hofbrauhaus and the place is huge! My friend and I decided to share a pork knuckle, also huge, and it was delicious. After that, we decided to head back to Oktoberfest for one last look and following that, we were on the coach back to London.
I already had friends before the start of this trip but I made a heap load more during. These kind of trips remind me of my band trips to San Fran and Disneyland back in highschool, they're so much fun...especially when you're travelling with like-minded people. It was sad to come home afterwards! Although I don't think 240 pounds is worth camping, a return coach, and free breakfast, I had the time of my life and I would do it all over again.
