More beer, More beer, More beer, More beer
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2008
1
16
33
Trip End
Oct 10, 2008
Munich,
Germany
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Thankfully we hadn't planned to visit Residenz, as the entire building was just one big scaffold and it was impossible to see even one brick of the actual building. It is always disappointing to come to Europe and not be able to see major monuments as they are covered by scaffolding. Matt tells me that there are some places that had been covered for the entire four years he was in Europe. We continued our walk down to Odeonsplatz, which is a much smaller version of the arcades and sculptures in Loggia della Signoria in Florence. The square is home to an enormous yellow church called Theatinerkirche. It is quite ugly from the outside but lovely inside.
A bit of culture was required to balance our drunken afternoon to come, so we opted to visit the Deutsches Museum.
Asam kirche
Despite being full of German school groups, we enjoyed wandering around the displays of authentic U boat submarines and replicas of aircraft from WWI and II. Probably the most interesting section of the museum for me was the section about bridge construction. They have a whole room of scale models of famous bridges from around the world and explanations of the engineering that was required to build them. It was very interesting to see the models of coffer-dams from medieval times where they built a circular structure in the middle of the river and sealed it to water, and then emptied it of water with buckets in order to build the foundations for the bridge. Incredible stuff and certainly some great minds at work to come up with some of the ideas. Having had enough culture for one day and an increasing urge to get ourselves to Oktoberfest, we headed back through town, stopping for Matt's first beer and bratwurst of the day at the now buzzing Viktualien markets. Ready for a big afternoon, we arrived at the Oktoberfest grounds at about 2pm. We found it a much different place to that which we had seen the night before. We walked into our first beer tent for the day, Paulaner and sat straight down at an empty table. In less than 5 minutes our very efficient beer frau had two 1 litre steins in front of us and our Oktoberfest experience had begun. The atmosphere in the beer tents is just incredible and has to be seen to be believed. There is an oompah band playing on an elevated stage in the centre and hundreds of tables crushed in together, filled with beer swilling locals.
New town hall in Munich
Every so often the band breaks out into the familiar Bavarian drinking tune of which we don't know the name or the words, but found ourselves singing along to at the top of our voices. It always finishes with the clinking of beer steins with all your neighbours and cries of Prost. To say clinking is somewhat of an understatement as those beer steins get smashed together. It is incredible that they don't seem to ever break despite the most vigorous of Prosting. We decided we would share the wealth of our company amongst a different beer tent for each round of beers. Next stop was Stadel which neither of us had ever heard of. We sat ourselves down and were served by the loveliest beer frau who we ended up chatting with for a while. We discovered that she had actually been to Brisbane 17 years ago on her honeymoon, whilst here we were on our honeymoon in her home town of Munich. It was nice to chat to some of the locals and feel like we were welcome at their little beer festival. Matt has a sometimes very annoying habit of video-taping events in our lives, however today I was actually glad he was recording a video after each round of beers because as the day wore on it was getting much harder to remember the names of the beer tents we were visiting.
Next stop was Lowenbrau, a much more famous German beer and hence a much busier beer tent. Helped by our good going beer buzz we confidently waltzed up to a table with a bit of space on the end and sat ourselves down. Within minutes we had more beers and a whole table of new friends.
Old town hall in Munich
Funnily enough we had sat ourselves down next to a lovely Australian married couple and a couple of Pommie boys. We enjoyed an hour of sharing beer stories, eating beer pretzels and wearing silly drinking hats before being kicked off the table by an unfriendly German chap who pointed to his name on the booking form on the table and informed us his many friends would be here very soon. As we had discovered, most of the tables are booked after 5pm by locals who have probably earned them as a birthright. Before then there is no problem getting a table and hence a beer, but after 5pm your chances start to slim quite considerably. Thankfully by this stage, more beer was the last thing we needed and we headed off to experience the other side of the Oktoberfest experience, the miniature fun park that they have erected in between all the beer tents. Last night when we had walked past the rollercoaster we had commented on how we couldn't possibly understand why people with 3 litres of beer in their stomachs would want to get twisted upside down and shaken around. A sure-fire method of inducing vomiting we thought. However tonight, with 3 litres of beer in our stomachs it seemed like the best idea in the world. We paid our 4 Euro and climbed on, giggling like school children. It was actually quite invigorating to be flying through the cold air upside down and we got off the ride absolutely buzzing. So much so that we walked straight to the other rollercoaster and climbed aboard that one too.
The rest of the story after that point is all my own recollections as this is the part where my husband's memories of Oktoberfest start to fade.
Viktuelian Markets and a local in lederhosen
I have a theory that although we had both consumed 3 litres of beer in 3 hours, the fact that Matt had finished the last 200mL of all of my steins may have contributed to his slightly more inebriated state. I do have another theory which may also have given me an unfair advantage. Beer pretzels are these enormous salty bread-looking things that girls walk around the beer halls selling for a few Euros. As they are salty, they go great with beer and I had done my best to finish almost a whole one whilst in the Lowenbrau tent. My theory is that they have a special method of soaking up the alcohol in your stomach so it is absorbed more slowly, hence making you less drunk and able to consume more beer steins than all of your mates. I have no factual basis for my theory but there has to be some explanation why a 60kg girl who hardly ever drinks beer was able to carry an 87kg experienced beer drinker home at the end of a drinking session. We'd both had such a fun day, even though we were heading home at 8pm. Oktoberfest really was as much fun as we had expected and certainly worth the expense of coming to Munich to join in the fun. We stumbled home and ate McDonalds across the road from our hotel, with nothing to show for our empty wallets except some vague memories, a heap of great photos and a couple of t-shirts.I forgot to mention that during our walk around Oktoberfest yesterday, Matt had bought me one of the gingerbread hearts that they sell in all the beer halls with various love slogans painted on them in sugar. Things like "Ich leiber dich" which is the very unromantic way to say I love you in German. I had commented to Matt on just how many men we saw walking home with them hanging around their necks. I told Matt that maybe they were "Forgiveness gingerbreads" and that the husbands bring one home for the wife as a piece offering after they've had a big day out on the booze with the lads. Matt didn't buy my theory at the time, but was very grateful he had bought me one when he woke the next morning and thanked me for being sober enough to get us both home in one piece.
