Germany 4

Germany 4 - Munich & Oktoberfest

After our days in Fussen, we headed toward Munich. It turns out that the beginning of Oktoberfest is actually in September, and in fact MOST of Oktoberfest is in September! It also turns out that the first weekend of Oktoberfest is one of the most popular time for visitors. Needless to say, we couldn't get a place to stay in Munich for anything less than $400/night! So, we stayed ~45 minutes outside of Munich (along the excellent train route) in Augsburg. We then took the S-Bahn into Munich for 2 days of crazed Oktoberfest fun! It turns out that Munich is really the prime area to celebrate Oktoberfest (we thought it was all of Germany, but it wasn't!), so this was definitely the place to be to celebrate! Oktoberfest was originally a celebration of the marriage of the first King Ludwig, and I guess the party was SO big they continued it to this day!

The first thing we noticed when we got to Munich was the sheer mass of humanity! Oktoberfest draws 6 million people every year, and we showed up on the most popular day of the event, the very fist Saturday of the festival! It was really obvious, as you can see by the number of people in this shot!

This is a shot of Claudia and the girls in the Marienplatz, which is the center of town. Behind them is the town hall, or "Rathaus" with the mechanical Glockenspiel. We returned here later to see the "dancing" people in the Glockenspiel while having a beer and hot chocolate (we will leave it to your imagination who had what!).

One of the museums we visited in Munich was the Residenz of the royal family, the Wittelsbachs (family to which Mad King Ludwig belonged). There are 2 sides to the Residenz - the "museum" and the "treasury." This is one of the opulent, jewel-encrusted boxes from the Wittelbach's collection in the Treasury.

This is the antiquarium from the museum side of the Residenz. It was quite the hall, and had all kinds of busts of various rulers through the ages, including many Roman rulers.

Here is Sophie in the "Gallery of the Mittelbach Family" which had dozens of pictures of the various rulers, etc. of the Wittelbachs.

One of the famous spots in Munich is the Hofbrauhaus, ahead left (see neon blue, partially-lit sign). This is where Hitler started gathering followers, as he worked the crowds up to a froth (pardon the pun!) about the government. He started a failed revolt from this bar that landed him in jail, where he then wrote Mein Kampf. Thus, this bar has a LOT of not-so-good recent history! Nonetheless, the reason Hitler and his gang went there was that it is a pretty spectacular bar! It can seat many hundreds of people and serves HUGE beers (see picture on the right). Their beer, though, tastes pretty much like Bud!

Hofbrauhaus was PACKED! This is a place where you are supposed to just find a spot and sit down. We were too tentative to do this in a place we can't speak the language, so we enlisted the help of a waiter. We finally got a spot and started immediately to order beer! They serve it in this liter mug, which apparently is the standard Oktoberfest mug. We ate dinner there (pork, potatoes and cabbage anyone?) and Sarah found out that German meatloaf is actually a slice of a HUGE hot dog! There were rowdy patrons all around us, apparently back from the Oktoberfest grounds, and lots of singing and beer drinking. It was definitely a site to remember!

The next morning was our BIG trip to Oktoberfest. It was Sunday, the 2nd day of the festival, which was supposed to be one of the less busy days. As you can see from above, if this was a not-so-busy day, I would HATE to be there on a busy day! It was wall-to-wall people from all parts of the world, and had the general flavor of our state fairs, but on steroids! It was literally about 10 times as big as the fairs we get around here in NE Ohio with at least 20 times the people! Plus, MANY of them were HAMMERED! We went there on the subway, which was also PACKED, and then wandered around checking things out. You can see above all the rides and fair-like eateries that littered the grounds.

So, it turns out that if you want to get a beer, you have to get on in one of the HUGE beer tents. To do that, you have to have signed up for a spot about a YEAR in advance! Needless to say, we hadn't so NO BEER FOR US! It was probably all for the good, since it was 11am and the sheer mass of humanity roaming around made it NOT a good time to be swigging 1 liter beers down! Here are a bunch of revelers who have clearly been drinking for quite some time!

The beer maids were amazing, NOT because they were St. Pauli Girl beautiful, but more so that they could carry insane amounts of beer! This woman has 6 1-liter mugs, each made of thick glass! Each weighed quite a bit, so trying to handle SIX in a huge tent with a bunch of drunken revelers was quite the feat!

Here's another shot of the various tents and food stalls and you can see some of the impressive Munich church spires in the background. Did we mention the SEA OF PEOPLE???

We ducked into one more beer tent to see if there was any way to pilfer a beer (no). This was one of the bigger tents and you can see the mass of drinking partiers and get a bit of a glance at the stage in the middle of it all.