Munich - Oktoberfest!

I remember the realization as we planned our trip that we would be in close range of Oktoberfest during our Europe trip and got increasingly excited as we got close to this event.

Since accommodations during Oktoberfest are particularly expensive, we stayed in "The Tent"; a temporary hostel created by erecting several circus tents each which hold 150ish beds.  Our first night was great as we met several others staying in the Tent including folks from Scotland, the US, Germany, etc.  Our accommodation experience went slowly downhill as we realized they weren't going to turn off the lights until 1 AM every night and 150 people can be pretty loud. Oh yeah, and Shannon and I had beds that were a good 50 yards apart.

If you want to know exactly how old you are (especially if you think you're making the turn into "real adulthood"), I would suggest going to the tent and you'll find out (we're kinda old).

Home sweet home.

Ok, enough about The Tent.  Our first full day in Munich we headed into the city where we did an abbreviated version of Rick Steve's walking tour.  The City Hall is a super impressive building in particular and we enjoyed the glockenspiel.

After a bit of history, it was an appropriate beer drinking time (a relative term in Europe, could mean breakfast time for some) and we headed to the Oktoberfest Fair Grounds.  What a great time we had!  

First, we wandered into the Ochsenbraterei Tent because we wanted lunch and what better than a tent focused on Oxen (eating them specifically).  Beer, giant pretzels, and beef made a great lunch.

Now you may notice that's a big beer.  The tents generally only serve 1 liter beers and it's specially brewed Oktoberfest beer with a higher alcohol content (about 6%).  We can't imagine a festival in the US where they commit to only serving giant highly alcoholic beers... the attitude toward drinking is definitely different (more responsible?) here.  Something to do with the drinking age?

Anyway, after a delicious first tent, we headed out to the LowenBrau tent which was our favorite as the band did a great job keeping the crowd excited.  We had a lot of "prosts!" with our German and UK based table mates.

We wandered the fair grounds and saw the non-tent side of Oktoberfest.  It seems to us that Oktoberfest is essentially a German State Fair.  Complete with carnival rides, food stands, a carousel, etc.  One last beer at the Hofbrau Haus and we headed out back to downtown for some dinner.

Oktoberfest has an incredibly energy.  It's hard to describe, but thousands of people relaxing, talking, and having a beer to fun music with occasional breaks to cheer as a gigantic crowd just makes you believe in humanity.