Weekend Seminar in Ancient Bavarian Culture

OKTOBERFEST
To Drink, Sing, and Be Merry – the Ultimate Goal in Life.


The day before I left for Paris, my fiend Clare asked me if I would be interested in going to Oktoberfest with her the following weekend. After pondering the invitation for about 10 seconds, I said that I would love to join her. After all, when in Germany, do as the Germans do.

It’s 29 September 2005 and Clare and I know what we are doing, how we are getting there, but we still have no idea where we will lay our heads at night. We are supposed to be leaving the following day and we did not want to rely on luck to find a place to stay when we got down to Munich. On my bike tour in Paris, someone had told me about this website called CouchSurfing.com. Now, this might sound a little crazy, but it is a giant database of people who have signed up to say that they have a free couch for people to sleep if they are coming to their town. So, a little reluctant, I entered my information and signed up to “find a couch.” Clare and I both a little apprehensive about what we would find, we ended up calling a guy in Munich – Daniel. Daniel said that he had some floor space for Clare and I to sleep on if we wanted to. Clare said that he sounded nice as she did the talking because she speaks German. So, we had officially found a place to stay in Munich for the last weekend of Oktoberfest.

Our ride picked us up at 2:00pm on Friday, September 30, 2005. Our ride down to Munich was another interesting story. There is another website (the name I can not pronounce or spell) where people note on there that they have extra space in their car going to and from a city. You can then contact those people to try and set up a ride. It’s much cheaper usually than taking the train because you are just chipping in for gas.

What should have been a 4-5 hour ride ended being about an 8 hour ride. There was so much construction and traffic on the road. We found our way from the train station where our ride dropped us off at to Daniels house. Clare and I were both a little nervous walking up to Daniel’s building because we were not sure what we were going to get, but we figured that we were together. He said that he had several other people also staying at his place as well, and if we didn’t feel comfortable, we could always leave and go find a hotel. The cool thing about Couch Surfing is that the surfers are not obligated to pay anything and the provider does not expect anything in return. We rang Daniels’ buzzer and he let us in and we were welcomed very warmly by him. More at ease, Clare and I found ourselves going to sleep on the floor of this random guys flat. We were excited for the next day.

It was 8:30am and we were leaving Daniels on Saturday, October 1, 2005 heading towards Theresienwiese – the Oktoberfest grounds. The first Oktoberfest was a wedding celebration between Ludwig I and Therese in 1810. In honor of the bride the Oktoberfest grounds were called Theresienwiese. Everyone agreed it was a really wonderful celebration, so it has been repeated every year since. Nowadays it attracts 7 million visitors each year who manage to eat 100 oxen, 500,000 chickens with 6.5 million steins of beer (which is an average of less than 1 beer per person). Oktoberfest always starts on the 2nd to last Saturday in September and ends 16 days later on the first Sunday in October.

Sal and Jeremy who were also staying at Daniels went with us to Oktoberfest. We had been told that in order to make sure that you can 1) Get into a tent and 2) get a table, you must get to the Oktoberfest grounds very early. Our first experience at Oktoberfest was in the Hofbrauhus Tent. It was 9am in the morning and Clare and I each have a liter of beer in our hands. What are we going to do with a Liter of Beer? I can barely drink 12 ounces of beer before it gets to warm to drink. The excitement of the day grew with each passing hour. And with each passing hour, I ate more and more pretzels. I might have eaten more than I drank, which is not a bad thing, being that the pretzels were so yummy. The cheers and the songs that people would start to sing we so random. I heard the song “I wanna know if you wanna Be My Girl” more times than I can count. However, it was so much fun being there.


I can't believe the amount of people that one tent can hold -anywhere from 8,000-10,000 people.















Tired of drinking and dealing with the 15:1 ratio of Men to Women, Clare and I decided to take a break from the Hofbrauhaus and go outside and enjoy the fair grounds. After walking around and taking a ride on the Ferris wheel, we searched for another tent to go back into. It was about 6pm and we were quite ready to go back home. Not having much luck flirting our way back inside any of the 12 tents, we started to head to the train station. Wanting to give it one more try, we went to a side door of the Spatenbrau tent. This tent just looked fun because it had a giant roasting pig on the outside of it.
A security guard came outside to get a group of people and Clare and I decided to join that group. We started to follow the group inside and right as we got to the door, the security guards started to stop us but allowed us through. After all of our hard work, Clare and I had made it to one more tent. The music in this tent was so much fun. It was all sing-along music – all from the US might I add. There was even a Dirty Dancing Medley. Seriously, this group loves the old tunes. It was great fun though. The music stopped at 10:30…we made our way out the doors by 11pm and we were on our way back to Daniels. It had been 14 hours of fun - but it was time for bed. We made it through day one.















It was at least midnight when we arrived back at our sleeping quarters and Daniel, Sal and Jeremy were sitting around talking. Now, Daniel has the complete set FRIENDS – yes, all 10 seasons. It was a must that we watch at least one of them while I went to sleep. So, we watched the very last episode – which I don’t know why – it is kind of a tear jerker.

The next morning, very tired like, Clare, Sal, Jeremy and I made our way back down to Oktoberfest for another day of festivities. Another day filled with fun new friends from all of the world, lots of songs and dancing on the tables, and lots of pretzels. Clare and I called it a day about 4pm and headed off to figure out the rest of our weekend plans.

How many beers can one person hold?















Seeing many of the German folk in traditional costume. I thought to myself – I have to have on of those outfits. So, the next best thing – a t-shirt that looks like one.















I don't look very nice here - I didn't get to wash my hair that morning!

By the way, I can balance a beer on my head!




















Look how much fun folks are having.















Our original plan was that we were going to go to Fussen to see the Neuschwanstein Castle – The Castle that Walt Disney based his famous castle on. However, our ride back from Fussen to Bonn fell through. Not wanting to be totally stranded in Munich – not that we weren’t having fun – we decided to try and find a ride back. Luckily, one of Clare’s friends from Bonn, Mark, was driving back the next day and said that he had room for the both of us. So, Clare and I luckily found two empty beds at a hostel, used up our free drink coupons that the hostel provided and went to sleep.

The next morning we walked around Munich for a couple of hours and then made our way back to Bonn with Mark.

Overall, it was a super fun weekend. Oktoberfest is one of those events that I am so glad that I got to experience, and I think that everyone should experience at least once. It has such a great atmosphere and attitude about it and most of the people are so nice and everyone is there to have a good time and to celebrate their culture. I hope to make it back to Oktoberfest in the future.

Prost (Cheers in German),
~Betsy