Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest...where to begin. We had so much fun, we are already talking about going back in a few years (if you're interested, let me know, because the more the merrier). We met up with some friends from London to help the Germans rein in their 175th Oktoberfest. We were there for the first weekend of the 16 day celebration, which began with a huge parade that saw tons of barrels of beer being carted in by extravagantly decorated Clydesdale's for each of the major brewers in Munich. There were also other "floats", including this random one of mini London buses.



We kicked off the weekend in the real Hofbrauhaus. Rumor has it that HB can accomodate up to 5,000 people sitting at their picnic tables and drinking their steins at once, and was nearly full when we arrived on Saturday afternoon.


For dinner, we made our way to the Oktoberfest site, and squeezed into one of the little tents. The food was fantastic, but the singing and dancing on the tables was hands-down the best part.




We had lunch at Schneider's one day...also fantastic!


Then came the day where we had a reservation in the Hofbrauhaus tent from 11:30-4, which came with 2 litres of beer and a half chicken each. We arrived at 10:45 for a prompt start to the day. We drank....

and drank...

and drank...

and drank some more.






and without stopping for too long in the middle, made our way over to the Lowenbrau tent for the evening festivities, which would not have been half as fun if we had not found these 4 German-only speaking Germans that were willing to share their table with our crazy bunch. They were fantastic, and I'm pretty sure somehow related to me, because there was an instant connection when they found out that my last name was Schneider...frau Schneider...cheers!