Oktoberfest 2006

Our first stop on the trip was in Munich for Oktoberfest. We pretty much skipped the sites - well, the sites in Munich anyway - and went straight to the beer tents.


This is one of many beer wagons we saw; I think we need at least a dozen of these along University Avenue on Florida football gamedays. This was actually pretty cool, no metal kegs, the beer is brought in real wooden kegs on horse-drawn wagons. Every tent/beer vendor had wagons coming and going (at an increasing rate as the day turned to night). It was neat to see for sure.



We tried to get reservations - as a side note we actually did, but the notice came to our physical address and we only open the mailbox at our house maybe once a month and since we never "received" the reservation, we didn't call to confirm.


Anyway, since we were there early in the day (we're parents now and even though we exposed Madison to Oktoberfest we did go early; we're not complete lowlifes) we didn't have any trouble finding tables. The only issue really is that most of the tables are reserved in the evening so it is likely that if you're at a table during the day you're going to have to move along around 5 PM when the reservations kick in.
We checked out a few tents, the Hippodrom (this is where we had the unconfirmed reservations), Hofbrauhaus, Augustiner and Lowenbrau. All the tents are cool, and they all redifine 'tent', but we spent the majority of our time at Lowenbrau where most of their tables are not reserved during the day.

You can see here that Madison and Shelly are ready for a beer as we check out the scene around the Lowenbrau tent.





Here's the inside of the Lowenbrau tent. All the tents are essentially the same - lots of tables, a band and stuff hanging from the roof. The only difference is the brand of beer served, the location of the band and the colors inside. As I said before we were there early, and left around 5 PM so we didn't see Oktoberfest at its full strength, but I guess they get pretty rowdy later in the evening. While we were there, the scene was fairly tame; the coolest part was when after a certain song, sung about every 20 minutes, a member of the band chugged his liter of beer. In this shot you can see the crowd toasting the soon to be chugging memeber of the band standing on the edge of the podium.



Speaking of chugging, check out Stephie getting ready to pound a liter of beer; I'm sure Wade is only helping to lift the beer not drink it. The other two at the table are Kristen and Kasey, friends of Steph and Wade that just happened to be in Germany during O'fest. Imagine that.

This crew stayed around for a few hours after Shelly, Madison and I headed back to the hotel. Word has it that the place got pretty lively (lots of prosting, standing on tables and singing) as day turned to night. You'll have to check out Steph and Wade's blog for any evidence, that is if they ever update it. Maybe next year Shelly and I can make a second trip before we make the big move home. Anyone up for baby sitting in late September of 2007?