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Articles Tagged ‘Oktoberfest’

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Oktoberfest!!! Actually, kind of disappointing…

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

Yes, you read that right. Oktoberfest was a little disappointing.

I got off the train at 7am and was immediately surrounded by drunk, lederhosen wearing Germans dragging cases of beer and singing drinking songs. So, to blend in, I grabbed a couple beers and followed the crowd to the Theresienwiese. I was told that no tents were allowed to serve alcohol until the keg was officially tapped, by the mayor, at the Schottenhamel tent, so I made my way there, behind just about 300 people. After 3 hours of drinking and singing, a door opened and everyone shoved. I was immediately crushed under the weight of the people behind us pushing as hard as possible. After 2 more hours of straight shoving, we were told it was full and needed to leave. Apparently, they opened up a different door than the main door, and let everyone in the back get in. Bastards!!! Plus at this point I had run out of beer and was desperate for another one.

After watching the parades, I made my way over to the Lowenbrau tent, just to be turned away because both the tent and biergarten were full. Every tent I tried, full. Even the Haufbrau tent, that serves people who are standing wouldn’t let anyone else in. How can I be at Oktoberfest and not have a fucking beer!!! I finally found a small biergarten run by Paulaner, so I was able to have a couple beers there.

Unfortunately the rest of the day and night was more of the same, so I left Munich disappointed. Unable to see the tapping of the keg, going hours without a beer, unable to get into any tents, and I even left for my train almost sober! Unlike my first visit to Oktoberfest, the opening day was far too crowded. Maybe I’ll visit again the first weekend in October…

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Ziggy Zaggy, Ziggy Zaggy, Oy, Oy, Oy!!

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

Yesterday was also a day for Luneburg’s Bayerisches Oktoberfest. Theresa and I set out around 8:45 after resting from the Hamburg trip. The first stop was the carnival games. I know that I’ll never win anything worth while, but it’s fun to play. The game I chose was a pull-tab type game that gave out points. Apparently, there are enough points in there to be able to win a 19″ LCD TV. Yeah, right. 5 Euros got me a whoping 60 points. Instead of trading them in for 2 pencils or a little Dora the Explorer notepad, I gave them to one of the little girls playing. I think she could’ve used the notepad more than I could.

Next mission was to score a Nutella crepe. I’ve never had Nutella before, but Theresa insisted I needed to try one. For those who have not been fortunate enough to have it, Nutella is a hazelnut-based sweet spread that tastes a lot like chocolate. So we finally found a place that had them. I went a step futher and got a bananna and Nutella crepe. Pretty amazing.

Short walk later we found our way into the major beer tent. We started with ein Mass of Lowenbrau and found our way to some free seats up by the main band. Theresa promptly made friends with a German guy sitting next to us. Never got his name, just referred to him as “Her German”. He would constantly inform her of the weirdest stuff that sounded like he just pulled it out of his ass. Apparently, in Munich, Italians are crazy. Needed to know that. Plus, he would randomly switch between English and German. I think he was too drunk to realize it. They all were. They even had to call the Deutsche Rotes Kreuz to help one of his friends. She was practically in a coma.

It’s really fun to see Germans letting go and partying. They’re usually so reserved, but put them in a beer tent, give them some beers and music and they become party animals. An interesting fact I found out is that they love the song “Country Road, Take Me Home”. And, as with most English songs that they played, they only knew the words to the chorus and would mumbel the rest.

We later found a couple other students and merged tables with them. Thanks to the previous 3.5 liters of beer, I joined the rest of the tent in standing on the benches singing, toasting, and dancing. I don’t know if you can call what I did dancing, but I’ll call it that. After ordering my fourth liter, I started to feel it and not in a good way. On a previous round, I accidentally ordered the wrong thing, and ended up with a half liter of some sweet beer. It definitely was not sweet in a good way, but I ended up pounding it like a champ. I don’t know why, I know that I should stay away from sweet alcohol, but I drink it anyways. Theresa was ready to go, so we headed out. We just made it off the grounds before I decided to decorate the ground with some of the beer and crepe I had ingested earlier. Made me feel a little better. After puking and several attempts by Theresa to just sleep along the sidewalk, we made it back to our housing around 2:00 a.m. For once I was ok with everything being closed today, which gave me the excuse to sleep until 1 p.m. without guilt…

Posted in General, Germany, Luneburg, Travel | No Comments »