Oktoberfest

Oh what a crazy, wild weekend Oktoberfest was. There’s no way to really describe it, other than to say it was much, much bigger than I had thought it would be. It was amazing – check the photos for yourself!

The beer waitresses must have the wrists of wrestlers – more than once I saw our waitress carrying twelve full steins at a time! That’s 12 litres of beer, plus the weight of the stein itself (around 1kg, I would think). Amazing!

We were very lucky to be there with some German folk; Jan had organised tickets for the seven of us (all from work) in the Hofbrau tent. Jan’s sister Nina also came with a couple of her friends, and together they took very good care of us, all day!

The tent was absolutely packed – off the top of my head, I think capacity was 6,000 people. Every 15 minutes the band would play a song whose lyrics roughly translate to, “drink drink, lets all drink”. This was interspersed with traditional German songs, as well as assorted hits such as John Denver’s “Country Road”, and “The Summer of 69″ by Bryan Adams. Quite the eclectic mix!

I was also pleased to learn that each tent had quite a good variety of food; though in the end, we only ate pretzels, and barbeque chicken. I found their roasting kitchen on one of my frequent journeys back from the bathroom, and I must say that it certainly puts Coles to shame…

And what could be better to finish off a day on the turps than some crazy fast carnival rides? Yes folks, Oktoberfest really does have it all! We rode two fast spinny things, and the five-loop roller-coaster before calling it a night (though not by choice; the grounds closed at midnight).

After 11 hours at Oktoberfest, it was good to see the hotel room; we slept late on Sunday and enjoyed a traditional German lunch before boarding the plane back to London.

I can’t wait to go again next year!