Date of Visit: 01-02 October 2011
BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER
Welcome to the world's largest beer festival, the OKTOBERFEST!
Despite being the "oktoberfest", the main festivities are held in september, with the first sunday of october marking the end of the festival. As we did not know that early enough, we only just managed to book a train there on the last sunday. Thankfully, we manage to attend it before it ends!
The festival ground is huge! For just a month every year, the open park space is transformed into the world's biggest beer festival. Moving inside the maze of the food stalls, souvenir stands, beer halls are very tiring. To make things worst, you will be squeezing with approximately 1 million other people(half of them being drunk).
Initially, I thought the oktoberfest is just a place cramped with beer tents. But I was wrong!!!
Oktoberfest is a giant carnival. Other than the beer tents and food stalls, there are also rollercoasters, thrill rides and game stalls. It is definitely a place where the whole family can spend an entire day. Everywhere we went, there are children running everywhere. It's hard to imagine why would parents bring their small kids to a place where the number of drunk people per square meter is the highest in the world. To us, it may seem dangerous, but this is how things are over here. Perhaps the parents are training their children up for the future!
Now, dress code 101. The traditional outfit for the oktoberfest is the lederhosen(male) und dirndl(female). These are the bavarian outfits. Almost everyone wears them to the festival, which makes the place really interesting. I would have wanted to wear one, but it costs a bomb to buy/rent a pair of lederhosen. So too bad....
Anyway, it seems that most ladies who wear the dirndl look extremely pretty. Maybe its the dress that makes them attractive. Otherwise, another plausible reason might be due to the beer google effect.
Alright, time for the main highlight of the trip, which is going into a beer tent! Not surprisingly, it is extremely difficult to get into any of the tent. The tents are usually closed after 2 hours as they will be filled to the brim with merry makers. You can see large crowd of people standing outside the beer tents waiting to get inside. I don't think it's a good idea to wait as people don't come out until it's really late, or until they get really drunk and have to be carried out.
Fortunately, our group consist of locals from Munich, therefore we managed to find a beer tent somewhere that still allows entry. My first impression of the interior of the tent is: "wow, it looks so christmasy!"
It is really lively inside the tent. There is a live band playing the traditional music, and people would just go up to the stage in the middle of the tent to dance. Every now and then, there will performances for the audience. One of the performance is the "Whip". A group of guys will go on top of the tables and start whipping the air with their long whips, in rhythm with the music played. The crackling sound of the whips are very intimidating at first, but after a while, it does not seem to be as bad anymore.
We managed to squeeze ourselves to a table with some other Germans. They are all really very friendly and we chat for a while. In fact, we kept talking to random people and taking photos. I even managed to talk, in my limited german, with an old man who spoke little english. Somehow, we seem to understand each other. He thought I was from Japan, so he started talking about WWII. Lol. When I told him I'm from Singapore, he doesn't know where it is, so he continued to think I'm from Japan. Zzzz...
By the end of the night, I think I've talked to so many random people, including some Israelis, an Italian stewardess from Lufthansa and a group of Bavarian. I think this is what the fest is about: Drink, be merry and make friends!
Anyway, what's the point of being inside a beer tent without BEER? The standard drink is a 1 liter beer, called Mass. And of course, we must have some good food to go along with the beer. So we had the famous pork knuckles, roast chicken and some enormous pretzels. The pork knuckles(called schweinshaxe) is just awesome. It has been stewed until it just simply melts in your mouth. It's really really good!
Anyway, after drinking and eating for 3 hours, we went out to see carnival in the night! It is still as busy and crowded as ever. All the tents and rides were lit up, which makes it more beautiful than in the day.
Despite having 2 liters of beer in us, we paid EUR8 to take a rollercoaster ride. It is themed after the Munich Olympics, which mean that there are 5 loop-the-loops!!! It is extremely fun! I guess alcohol and adrenaline mixes well!
BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER, BIER
Welcome to the world's largest beer festival, the OKTOBERFEST!
The festival ground is huge! For just a month every year, the open park space is transformed into the world's biggest beer festival. Moving inside the maze of the food stalls, souvenir stands, beer halls are very tiring. To make things worst, you will be squeezing with approximately 1 million other people(half of them being drunk).
Initially, I thought the oktoberfest is just a place cramped with beer tents. But I was wrong!!!
Oktoberfest is a giant carnival. Other than the beer tents and food stalls, there are also rollercoasters, thrill rides and game stalls. It is definitely a place where the whole family can spend an entire day. Everywhere we went, there are children running everywhere. It's hard to imagine why would parents bring their small kids to a place where the number of drunk people per square meter is the highest in the world. To us, it may seem dangerous, but this is how things are over here. Perhaps the parents are training their children up for the future!
Now, dress code 101. The traditional outfit for the oktoberfest is the lederhosen(male) und dirndl(female). These are the bavarian outfits. Almost everyone wears them to the festival, which makes the place really interesting. I would have wanted to wear one, but it costs a bomb to buy/rent a pair of lederhosen. So too bad....
Anyway, it seems that most ladies who wear the dirndl look extremely pretty. Maybe its the dress that makes them attractive. Otherwise, another plausible reason might be due to the beer google effect.
Alright, time for the main highlight of the trip, which is going into a beer tent! Not surprisingly, it is extremely difficult to get into any of the tent. The tents are usually closed after 2 hours as they will be filled to the brim with merry makers. You can see large crowd of people standing outside the beer tents waiting to get inside. I don't think it's a good idea to wait as people don't come out until it's really late, or until they get really drunk and have to be carried out.
Fortunately, our group consist of locals from Munich, therefore we managed to find a beer tent somewhere that still allows entry. My first impression of the interior of the tent is: "wow, it looks so christmasy!"
It is really lively inside the tent. There is a live band playing the traditional music, and people would just go up to the stage in the middle of the tent to dance. Every now and then, there will performances for the audience. One of the performance is the "Whip". A group of guys will go on top of the tables and start whipping the air with their long whips, in rhythm with the music played. The crackling sound of the whips are very intimidating at first, but after a while, it does not seem to be as bad anymore.
By the end of the night, I think I've talked to so many random people, including some Israelis, an Italian stewardess from Lufthansa and a group of Bavarian. I think this is what the fest is about: Drink, be merry and make friends!
Anyway, what's the point of being inside a beer tent without BEER? The standard drink is a 1 liter beer, called Mass. And of course, we must have some good food to go along with the beer. So we had the famous pork knuckles, roast chicken and some enormous pretzels. The pork knuckles(called schweinshaxe) is just awesome. It has been stewed until it just simply melts in your mouth. It's really really good!
("Er ist verrueckt!" said the German beside us. It means "he is crazy")
Anyway, after drinking and eating for 3 hours, we went out to see carnival in the night! It is still as busy and crowded as ever. All the tents and rides were lit up, which makes it more beautiful than in the day.
Despite having 2 liters of beer in us, we paid EUR8 to take a rollercoaster ride. It is themed after the Munich Olympics, which mean that there are 5 loop-the-loops!!! It is extremely fun! I guess alcohol and adrenaline mixes well!
The next day, we met up with my friend's friend who brought us to eat some german white sausages(called weisswurst) for breakfast. The weisswurst tastes really good, especially with mustard. And guess what we ordered for breakfast. No, not coffee... but beer! Yup, this is Munich and it is Oktoberfest!
With that, we end our 2 days visit to Oktoberfest! What an experience it is! I only have this to say:
WOW! I've been to Oktoberfest!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment