130. Germany's Beer Culture

Where: Munich, Germany
When: September 28 - 30, 2012
With: Dave and Frank

While it is well known that Germans regularly enjoy their beer, there is one time of the year when they are known to up the ante and give one of the world's biggest parties: Oktoberfest. 

I have been wanting to go to Oktoberfest for years. And I thought that in my last year of my 20s, it was now or never. Dave's friend Frank was in town visiting us, and we thought it was the perfect thing to do while he was here. 

The trip didn't start in an ideal way. We arrived at our hotel, and found that our room had been cancelled. We spent the next four hours on the phone with hotels.com attempting to have them rebook us somewhere, anywhere, but being the Friday of Oktoberfest weekend made the process a bit difficult. By the time we sorted everything out, dropped our bags off at the new hotel, and were ready to go out, most of the day was over and we were starving. So instead of heading to the Oktoberfest grounds, we headed into the first beer hall we found. Despite all the frustration, we ordered 3 steins, toasted and attempted to kick off our weekend in Munich. 

You can never have enough pictures of steins.

For dinner, we took advantage of the variety of sausages on the menu. It was an extremely filling meal.

After feeling slightly drunk, and very full of German bratwurst, we made our way to the Oktoberfest grounds. It was easy to find - we just followed the large crowds of drunken teens/20-somethings dressed in leiderhosen until we reached a giant "welcome" sign.

The grounds of Oktoberfest were like a giant county fair. Large wooden beer halls had been constructed on either side of a pathway in the middle of a grassy field. Behind the halls, rides and games stretched out to make a gigantic fairground. While we couldn't get into any of the beer halls this late in the day, we were able to stop for a pretzel and enjoy the scene. 

That night, we had our dinner in an authentic German beer hall. We drank many steins and ate lots of meat. I even got scolded by our waitress for not finishing - she stood over me until I took the last few bites! The night went by in a blur and got us very excited for the next day. Many people around us were in leiderhosen and enjoying the night drinking their steins around giant wooden tables. 

Despite our late night, the next morning was a very early one. We were up at 5:30am to make our way to the fairgrounds to get in line at one of the beer halls. By the time we arrived at 7am, the lines were already pretty long and the grounds were crowded.

We chose one of the more popular beer halls since it was meant to hold the most people. We waited in line for 4 hours among idiotically annoying teenagers and jostling Germans. We were cut several times, and at the end of the all, we were no closer to getting into the beer tent than we were at 7am. We were NOT happy campers. 

In a last ditch effort for beer, we decided to cross the fair grounds to see if we could get into the beer hall across from where we had been. Finally, luck was on our side, and we managed to be first in line to get into the hall. While we still had to wait an hour before getting in, the waiters served us steins while we waited and we were content that we would be getting into a beer hall for Oktoberfest.

Once inside, my celebration was mildly delayed, mainly due to the hour long line to get into the ladies' room (the downsides of drinking an entire liter of beer). Once that was finished, I set out to find the boys. I found these two attempting to shmooze some German girls to get us a prime spot at one of the benches. 

When I was able to sit and take in the scene around me, I finally began to enjoy. An oompa band played loudly in the middle of the giant tent, and people were cheering, yelling, singing and talking all around us. Beer maids walked around with arms full of steins, pretzels and sausage, so if you were hungry or thirsty, you never had to wait long to be served. 

Every 15 minutes, the band played a few old favorites that were meant to be a sing-along. Everyone would stand on the benches while cheering and singing and chugging and drinking. 

The rest of the day was kind of a blur. There was a lot of this going on.

And this.

Dave did something make me angry, which resulted in this.

And of course, a lot of standing on tables and singing.

And more of this.

At some point in the day, we witnessed a guy pee in a stein. He then proceeded to pass it around as though it was beer, watched other people drink it, and then drank some himself. It was about that time we decided to call it a night. 

While we had high hopes we could sleep off our day of drinking and head back out that night, we fell asleep at 5pm and did not wake again until 6am for our flights. It was a near disastrous trip that worked itself out nicely and definitely felt like we put a big, old stamp of completeness on the German beer culture.