Follow the Lederhosen

C’est mon anniversaire! – Es ist mein Gerburtstag! – It is my birthday!

This weekend I turned 20! I celebrated the fact that I still can’t legally drink in the U.S. by going to Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany.

Not for eating, just for looking, but probably won’t make it back in my suitcase in one piece.

I was able to convince Sammy, a friend from Linfield (also at AUCP with me), to go the festival.

See the hanging angel guy in the background?

Not only was I extremely nervous to be traveling to a country where I don’t speak the language, but also to a festival that brings in thousands upon thousands of people for opening day. I had read some articles how it wasn’t a smart idea to try to go on the first day of the festival because you won’t get into a tent and you won’t have a good time. The opening day however, was my birthday so I HAD to go, regardless.

Marstall Tent!

In my opinion, Marstall is the prettiest tent.

We felt very accomplished after arriving early to our flight in Marseille, having no problems finding the S8 train from the Munich airport and then changing to take the U1 train and finding our AirBnB apartment.

There were cute things like this everywhere.

The man who owned the apartment was extremely helpful and spoke excellent English. He told us which tents he recommended going to, what time we should get there, how to get home and the best way to get back to the airport. Thankfully, his English was easy to understand!

The grounds reminded me of the Puyallup Fair back home.

I had been to Munich this past summer with my family and had taken a video of the route we would need to walk to get to Oktoberfest (weird, I know). I think I had the wrong address when I took the video because I could not figure out where we were at all when I tried using it. So my backup option was the directions I had looked up and saved. Sadly, my sense of direction with German street names was terrible and I couldn’t figure out where to go after the second turn. My last plan was to find people wearing lederhosen and follow them to the festival. The first people we found that spoke English, told us we could just ride the bus with them, so we did! They told us that they were actually in a band at the festival in the Armbrustschützen tent.

Our tent! It can seat almost 7,000 people.

At 7:30 a.m. we started waiting in line to get inside the Hofbräu tent. I could see the door from where we were standing, so I was hopeful that we would have an easy time finding a seat. The doors opened at 9 a.m. (This was really exciting because we originally thought that we would have to stand in line until 12 p.m. when the first beer is served.)

Since there are a lot of tourists that don’t speak German, the workers just blow whistles at you, expecting you to understand what they mean.

Once the doors opened everyone stated pushing and screaming in excitement, resulting in us being squished together like sardines. After making it through the doors we saw many empty tables but then realized that these were the reserved tables. (If I attended Oktoberfest with a large group every year then I would reserve a table.) At the other tables, open for everyone, there were already many filled ones. The others had people standing on top of them reserving space for their friends. At this point I started freaking out, thinking that we wouldn’t get a table, but then I started to ask people if we could sit with them (since there was only two of us) and finally a table said yes!

So. Many. People.

Our table was a group of people from New Zealand, who had come to London for work. They were nice and taught us a new card game. (They also say Paper-Scissors-Rock and not Rock-Paper-Scissors…strange, but they thought the same of us when we said how we say it in the States.)

I think his name was Mat…maybe Mike…

The tent sold pretzels (bretzel) and drinks like water and pop, BUT no beer yet. Sammy and I shared a huge pretzel, which was delicious and ate a sugary pretzel later in the day.

Great breakfast right?

Finally 12 o’clock came around and the first beers were served. With beers, comes bathrooms, and the bathrooms were AWFUL. Angry, drunk girls who need to pee and have to wait a long time in a crowded, tiny line is not an ideal situation.

No idea what most of these said, but they were cute.

Another thing that I hadn’t read was that the servers needed to be tipped about €5, per beer, to start out with. If you don’t, they won’t come back to serve you again. So we gave the tip and she always came back. We also noticed that the waitresses wear wrist guards because they can be carrying up to 10 beers for each table, all day.

Loved this beer.

Sammy and I had decided we needed to try the famous roasted chicken (hendl). It was probably the best chicken I’ve ever had. So good, that I forgot to get a picture of it before we devoured the entire thing. So good, that we got another one the next day. I would definitely recommend getting a hendl.

Remembered the picture of our second chicken!

At around 4:30 p.m. we decided to leave our tent. (We didn’t need anymore beer and wanted to see the rest of the festival before it became too dark.) The grounds had an amazing atmosphere. Everywhere you look you see people dressed in their traditional German clothing (I was sad I didn’t wear any, but the clothes can be very expensive) and the tents and stands are intricately decorated.

Goals.

For dinner we ate bratwurst-style hot dogs. We were exhausted and decided to find our way home. It was too much work to figure out where to go and I didn’t want to get lost, so we just took a cab (only €11). Make sure you write down your address because the taxi driver will most likely have no idea what you’re saying!

I wanted to try them all.

Our flight on Sunday wasn’t until 3:45 p.m., so we went back to Oktoberfest at 10 a.m. to look around, buy some more souvenirs and go check out the inside the other tents. We then found our way to the train station (about a 15 minute walk from Oktoberfest) and arrived at the airport without any problems. The S8 train from the festival to the airport is the best way to go because it’s only €10 for a one way ticket and only about an hour long ride.