OKTOBERFEST!!
Hi Everyone
we'll, just came back from Munchen (Munich) and it was a blast. We went to Oktoberfest (Wiesn in German). It's pretty much like the stampede but with 14 huge tents for drinking.
We left Baden on saturday so we could take advantage of the Schones-Wochenende-ticket (good weekend ticket), which is 30 euros for unlimited travel in Germany for up to 5 people. WE only had three people (Keegan, Felix, and I) but we picked up a couple from Spain to split the ticket with us, so it only cost 6 euros/person to get there. We left pretty early to get there as soon as we could, so we left Baden at 6:24 and arrived at Munich at 12 (i was really tired cuz I stayed up all night watching batman begins (really good movie)). The first thing we wanted to do was get inside a beer tent, not knowing how difficult it was. It turns out we went on "Italian weekend" when all the Italians come to drink and also the busiest day of the whole festival. Apparently they let people in the tents at 8 and 9 and then closes off entry (like 5 people / hour in).
We found the Hofbraeu tent and stood in line. The tent is pretty big, it houses 6,896 people inside and 3,022 people outside. It only took about 2 hours of wait to get in, so we were pretty lucky, although waiting in line was pretty fun. All these drunk people would try to get in and would get thrown out (literally) by security. Drunk people are funny. Once inside we found a table (some how) and got a beer (8 euros for 1 litre). The atmosphere inside is amazing, so vibrant and cheerful, lots of singing and dancing (and drinking).
So we pretty much stayed here drinking, talking to people and having a good time for a while. We met some people from Pakistan, Finland, slovenia, Italy and Germany and it was really nice cuz they kept refilling our beer for us (free beer, sweet). Keegan some how got an Oktoberfest hat so that was cool, i think the drunk Slovenians got it for him. The beer mugs are also very cool. Pretty heavy and very durible (a must since you toast people every 5 minutes or so). They had this toasting/beer song that they played a lot so that kept the atmosphere and drinking going, was cool.
The beer-maids were also quite inpressive, they'd carry 10 1-litres mugs of beer at a time from table to table, that's a lot of weight.
after about 4 litres and 7 hours or so we decided to go and find Felix (he didn't come in the tent since he didn't want to wait). Apparently he had grabbed a mug and was hiding it from the cops (100 euro fine for stealing them) by blending into a random group of germans. When we found him they invited us to go bar-hopping so we did.
So we pretty much went from Bar to bar until they were all closed (4am). These Germans are crazy they can drink like non-stop, I stopped drinking since I wasn't feel so good but had a few shot with them afterwards. It was pretty neat to see all the small local bars that they and had some messed up people there, was a neat experience. With no more bars to go to they showed us this club but they didn't have enough for the cover fee and we decided to call it a night.
We had no place to sleep (impossible to get a hostel in such short notice) but one of the guys invited us to sleep in his flat, so that was really nice (cheap trave land free accomodations is good). We got there and they drank some more (they're crazy i tell u) and ended up going to sleep at 6.
We woke up at 11 and decided we had enough drinking and went to check out hte Deutsches Museum. The museum was huge!! (30 km of walking) so we couldn't see it all. It was like a haven for engineers of all types with Electrical engineering exhibits, mechanical stuff (turbines, motors..ect) and various stuff like that.
We saw this wicked Electical demonstation with like 1 milion volt open air arcs and stuff like that. One of the coolest thing was they shot 300KV (i tihnk) arc through glass and it sparked all insides the glass pane, looked so cool!
There was also a nice aeronautical, human body and space exhibits.
There was a Einstein exhibit which was really cool but we didn't get much time to see it since we had to catch our train home.
For the train ride home, we couldn't find 2 people to split the ticket with so it ended up costing us 10 euros/person, o well still good.
Overall, the trip was really fun, met a bunch of people, was cheap (about 25 euros spent for travel, food, accomodations, entry fee (i bought a stein for 18 so my cost as more)) and have lots of good memories and souvineers (i got 4 1-litre mugs, 1 was for a friend tho).
Oktoberfest ended next weekend, but I won't be going again. Right now it seems like we will go to Belgium next weekend.
I'll post some pictures tonight or something, we I upload them. Have a good day.
vic
posted by Victor Choy @ 2:47 p.m.
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