The morning came quickly today. We are all meeting at the Starbucks in the Hauptbahnhof at twelve-thirty, so I headed out the door at eleven thirty. At the first intersection I was greeted by the clanging harnesses and hoof falls of a team of six draft horse, pulling a full load of kegs destined for the festivities.
The rest of the walk to the station only took fifteen minutes providing forty-five minutes to wander through the various overpriced shops and eventually succumb to a fast food craving. Burger King was the only option. I wolfed down a Whopper meal like there hadn’t been a feeding in about a week. A Starbuck's grande green tea and Katrin's friend from Berlin kept me company while we waited for the rest of the crew to arrive on a delayed train.
After a false start at the Paulaner Tent, where no empty tables could be found,...
... our Oktoberfest crew diminished rapidly, after eventually finding a table in the Lowenbrau tent. Fran and the Rostock contingent were more interested in shopping than spending the day singing, dancing, eating, and drinking.
So the stalwart fearsome foursome held down the fort, while more friends arrived throughout the day and evening. We opened the afternoon with lunch and a round of Radlers, basically two-thirds pilsner and one-third sprite.
I love good venison and so should have been logically preconditioned not to try it in a “mass feeding” situation. Sure enough the two sliced, bone dry, pieces of grizzle arrived flooded in gravy and fortunately spatzle as well. One out of two isn’t all that bad. Oh well, I’m sure there will plenty of good Hirsch to be had in Berchtesgaden.
The shear enormity of this tented spectacle became apparent when I wandered up stairs, during a band break. The hall is about the size of a football field and packed so tightly with tables that when seated your back settles up against the person sitting at the table behind you. So many people were moving around that there was no way to even estimate the human volume.
This tent also sponsored the Munich Shooting Club, so there were two ranges, behind glass doors (upstairs over the kitchens), where members tested their Oktoberfest aim.
So, the way the Oktoberfest scheme works is that if you had great pre-planning to have pre-booked a reservation a year in advance, then your table is available at 5:30pm until 10:30pm. Prior to that, if you don’t show then scavengers such as our group make good use of the table in the meantime. The waitress crew certainly doesn’t mind the extra tips from a full table during the hours where it would have remained vacant.
Despite the bad venison experience there are many creative and traditional dishes served. This vegetable platter is one of them, complete with many different forms of radish.
Fully energized with traditional fare we were now ready to sing and dance the evening away. One of the really fun parts of Oktoberfest is that everyone is having a good time. If you want to stand, sing, and dance on your table, then simply go for it.
For the moment, we are banished from our previous squatting rights table and sent to wander the aisles.
The operations of running a bier tent are really very impressive. There are only a couple of centralized “filling stations”. The 1-liter steins flow in a pressurized blur of foam and liquid.
The waitresses flex under the load of several steins, but still manage a laugh or a smile.
The “weight lifters” of the event are the guys who carry five steins in each hand. This guy has five in his right hand and two in the left. (Note the four in-had and one stacked in the middle of his right hand grouping.)
The friendly atmosphere is contagious. This gentleman and his Frau were standing next to us. I really wanted a picture of the cool embroidery on his lederhosen bib, which he agreed to allowing me to photograph as long as I took a full picture of the two of them as well. We then chatted, toasted each other, and sang along to the tunes.
Five hours of reveling was building an appetite within our group, so we headed back upstairs for a feeding. This time I went with “Old Faithful” and ordered curry wurst.
Suddenly there was a spontaneous “picture-rama” as everyone started snapping randomly as many different pictures of the crew as possible.
I tried my best to make it to the 10:30pm ending time frame but had to drop out at a little after 9:30pm. The venison just wasn’t feeling all that great in a gastric lump. So heading outside, I gave a mental wave good-bye to the watchful statue on the hill…
… and gave one last look to the Lowenbrau tent.
“Auf Wiedersehen” meant not only good-bye, but good night for me. There was talk amongst the Oktoberfest loyalists in the group of making an actual table reservation for next year. That could be an awfully tempting invitation.
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