Oktoberfest - München 2010 first weekend

Munich is the capital of Bavaria, Germany. Located on the River Isa North of the Bavarian Alps, and is the third largest city in Germany besides Berlin and Hamburg. The Citys motto is 'München mag Dich' - which translates to 'Munich Likes You' :) and it did like me...

Oktoberfest: is a 16 - 18 day festival held each year, running from late September to the first week of October. Originally an agricultural festival it is the worlds largest fair with more than 5 million people attending every year. There is around 7million litres of beer sold every year, which is equal to about €70,000,000 worth of beer sold in the 2 and a half weeks of Oktoberfest.

2010 marks the 200th Anniversary of Oktoberfest and expected to be one of the biggest on record. I arrived in München on Friday the 17th of September, a day before Oktoberfest started, still recovering from my 10 days worth of Amsterdamage.

I caught the train from the main station in Amsterdam very early on the Friday morning and arrived in Munich in the early afternoon. These trains travel really fast (as shown on the pic on the left). This is my first inter - country train trip, and have decided it is one of the best ways to travel while in Europe.

Once in Munich I cab'd it to Hotel Santis to settle in, get my bearings and prepare for Oktoberfest :) It was a nice establishment, despite being only 3 stars, i had a buffet breaky every morning, my room was a decent size, and internet was fairly cheap. They had a nice restaurant, and bar downstairs, with meals being cheap for hotel guests. I enjoyed some great local meals here and it was really good to have my own room for a few days, especially after all the hostel living I did in Amsterdam.

That afternoon I did a little bit of an explore and visited the a nearby Cemetery. I saw some amazing old tombstones and really took in the history of the area, it was in a really old school forested area and I enjoyed walking around and looking at some of the headstones that were over 100 years old. Despite being a Cemetery it was relaxing to just take a step back and look around.

That night I decided to buy some scissors to trim my beard. Since travelling I had not trimmed it at all, and it was definitely getting out of control, in the words of my cousin 'what is with the dead possum on the end of your chin'....lol

Oktoberfest: I headed up to the train station around 9:30 the next morning, it was only a short walk up the road, and only about 3 stops to the festival grounds called Theresienwiese.

I started talking with a local German chap at the station,  who was wearing his Lederhosen, (German for leather breeches - the traditional national costume) and I got the local low-down of Oktoberfest. I walked with him to the grounds and then we went our separate ways.

There were already people everywhere, it was a hive of excitement. I wandered around for a little while, taking in all the sites and surveying the area. There are 14 main tents which are all non-permanent structures and only used for the festival, they are huge with the biggest one housing almost 7000 people inside and around 3500 people outside.

The main street was cordoned off for the opening precession, where each of the tents bring there beer into their respective tents and the festival is then officially opened at midday by the incumbent Mayor of Munich by tapping the first keg of beer.

Trying to get into a beer tent first thing was virtually impossible, so I wandered around a little and ended up sitting with some kiwi lads in one of the outside areas attached to one of the major beer tents. We waited out our time until we could purchase beverages by playing some cards and then it was on.
We where then joined by an American girl who was just trying to get a beer,  it is equally impossible to get served if you are not sitting down at a table. She was wearing the traditional dirndl dress, they where selling for around 100euros, and you pay even more the the lederhosen (and I decided not to get myself a pair)

As soon as it midday cheers went up as well as the stomping and the banging, then the beers flowed, I consumed a few steins that day, (but no where near my record by the end of my time at Oktoberfest). Steins where approx 8.80euros but if you didn't tip you would not be served again, so we paid a min of 10euros per litre stein.

We continued on until late in the arvo, then I missoned back to my hotel, jumping in a cab as soon as I was out of the grounds...wasted....
It was a good first day. I enjoyed an early night and was back in the grounds fairly early the next morning

I spent the Sunday mainly wandering around trying to get into the beer tents I had not seen and to get the photos I missed out on the first day. There was live music in all the tents all playing traditional German drinking songs as well as a few classics from around the world.

It was an amazing atmosphere, people dancing on tables, beer wenches walking around carrying epic amounts of beer at one time (I think the record I saw was about 9 steins at once!!) crazy drunken people everywhere termed - bierleichen (German for beer corpses). A lot of them end up on the hill you can see in the back of this picture.

I flew out of Munich in the early afternoon of Monday 20th of September, having to travel to Berlin before a final connection flight back into London. Due to a fire alarm going off in Luton airport my plane was delayed and I did not arrive back into London until about 1am Tuesday morning.

I made it back to the Saint Christophers hostel and Belushi's bar in Shepherds Bush around 2:30am in the morning after a long and drawn out time in transit (which included missing my bus transfer and having to buy another ticket)

I was checking in and met a interesting Irish fellow down in the chillout room, after some banter we ended up drinking until the sun came up...
Welcome back to London.....