One way to the UK?

Well, the ride from Salzburg to Munich was really quite short, except for the traffic, but we still got into Wombats in good time – and right in the first week of Oktoberfest too! We all got wrist tags on check-in with the Hostel name, address and room number (if you asked for it!) so that you would be let in and so that others coudln’t sneak into the Hostel! Apparently it happens A LOT around Oktoberfest time due to SO many people going there and not enough accommodation, as it gets booked out so quickly every year!

After making the beds, we headed out to get some food – Mara headed down to Kaufingerstrasse (sp?) the main shopping street to get another… winter jacket and then once we’d eaten some pizza we left, in the rain, for the Oktoberfest Grounds! Short walk, about 12 minutes, but pissing down rain made it annoying! By the time I was about 30 metres inside the grounds, my shoes started leaking!!! Damn the mesh parts on top of them! It was like I had walked through a lake in my shoes! You know the squidgy feeling of wet socks and water inside the shoe? Yup, that was it. Mara soon joined me as her shoes also have the mesh top hahahahha.

We walked around the food and rides area, then headed to some tents including Augustina, Lowenbrau and Hofbrauhaus and we never ended up finding the damn Wine Tent! Is it a myth perhaps?? Anyway, inside the tents we got let in the doors fine (group of 3 females, easy done), however the problem once inside is that there are Thousands of people in each “tent” (7 million attend Oktoberfest each year between 22 Sept and 6 Oct this year) and you need to be seated to get served by one of the Wenches (who carry up to 9+ Litre Steins at a time!)…. so trying to actually find a table/benches with space on it was harder than finding a dry patch of floor area, hence why we went though three or four tents, then finally decided we had absorbed the atmosphere and my shoes were now swimming pools, that we headed back to the Hostel to the Wombar to meet up with Guy, Steven and Mark to then go for dinner at a Thai place! Tried following instructions to get to the first one, which failed, so instead we walked back towards Wombats to a little Thai/Vietnamese restaurant on the next street. It proved to be one funny evening…

When we got inside, there was one guy sitting on a 4-table, and being six of us we needed bigger tables (the restaurant was quite busy and small), so the guy moved, and then we just asked him to join us – why not? He was British and said he’d just stay for a beer as he was waiting for a friend… ohhh a date? haha. Had some good banter (happy Ali!?) about how the date was an older lady, from California, with lots of plastic surgery and a huge fake chest! Naturally we all stared when she walked in, poor woman!

Anyway, the food was great – and after a while Ian’s mates (the Brit guy above is named Ian) all came in… quite drunk after a day at Oktoberfest, and it was also Bad Shirt Day, so they all looked hideous! And most were on the father and son trip, so there was 12 of them in total – so they joined onto our table (as we’re nice obliging Aussies) and also took over this other guys table… and after these Brits were all loud etc, the guy whose table they took over, finally spoke, and turned out he was bloody Scottish!!! He’d been sitting there quietly drinking his jasmine tea all night without a word hahaha and gosh the Brits bagged him for it! Uh well. Funny funny guys,,… we ended up sharing (giving?) some of our food to them before they ordered (we’d eaten well enough by then with entrees and mains) and noticed the guys were wearing GIRLS underwear – Lis HAD to notice one of the young guys Andy had ‘white lace’ above his jeans. so off came the jeans to show us hahahaha. Even the Aussie guys at our table were amused. The Brits all had girls undies on for when then went into The Pigpen inside an Oktoberfest tent – when you go in there, you come out with NO underwear on!!!!!  Umm so that was well interesting, and then we got to see some photos of something nasty the guys did to one of the other guys at the table when he was passed out drunk… can’t believe many of them were father and son and they lets things happen like that…. ahhaha it was funny nasty, but still Eww and I’m not mentioning it on here! Almost scarred for life!

Anyway, the whole dinner evening was great fun! After which we headed back to Wombar where we met up with Jeremy and Josh (who we first met in Amsterdam and who borrowed pants from Lis and Mara…) and we drank with them a while at the bar, and also Josh’s brother Craig and his flatmate Rowan – all great guys. Craig and Rowan were pretty damn drunk after steins all day – and even after Josh had returned the steins and tokens and gotten his deposit back (you’d be surprised how many get stolen during Oktoberfest!) the guys still ordered more and just paid another deposit for theirs! Then around 11pm once the Oktoberfest ground “tents” had closed, everyone else staying at the Hostel ended up back in the Wombar too – so we once again met up with Bryn, Ollie, Nathan, Duck and Michael – plus some others and our guide Renee who was to take us to Venice the very next morning — as I said to her about 0300am, if she’s still out there drinking then I knew I was ‘safe’ too to make the morning bus! Ended up having quite a good chat to Nathan for ages before heading to bed.

Apparently most of our London flatmates were also there at Oktoberfest, but we only saw Ado in the flesh, and then he was also on our Busabout bus from Munich to Venice, although he got off in St Johan (whatever for?!?).

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 29th, 2007 at 3:47 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.