Oktoberfest

It's October 15th and the first snow just fell in Prague. I'm not prepared! Just a few weeks ago on September 26th my friends and I were in Munich for Oktoberfest and it was MUCH better weather!




This was a last minute trip.. the planning was half assed and up til the last minute. It ended up just being Fran, Stephanie, and I- the original CELTA girls.. the first ones to hang out with each other in Prague before the course started. Oktoberfest lasts for 3 weeks.. ending the first week of October. We decided to go for the second week, as there was a Czech holiday on Monday the 28th of Sept which allowed us to have a recovery day from the mayhem to be expected. We had no place to stay, as all of the hostels were either booked or ridiculously expensive, so we decided to just plan a saturday-sunday trip that wouldn't require us to plan for a place to stay. We would party all day and all night if we had to. Plus.. we're 3 girls-- therefore, really easy to find a place to crash if necessary.

We arrived in Munich Saturday afternoon-- unfortunately all the earlier buses were full by the time we officially decided to go. It was a 5 hour ride on student agency.. which was only about 29 euros where we got comfortable seats with a movie to watch and free hot drinks! yumm we watched Lord of War which was really uncomfortable to watch on a bus.. not exactly the type of movie I was expecting. I've seen it before and warned Fran that is was quite disturbing.. but I actually enjoyed it the second time watching it. I drank hot cocoa too.. delicious!

My friend Lissa from Phoenix moved out to Germany a couple of months ago. She is half German and half Brazilian. We used to work at the dubliner together in phoenix.. and she was the one who really convinced me that I should move out here.. thank god I listened to her! She lives an hour outside of Munich so we met up with her for lunch as soon as we arrived. Her friends are not really into Oktoberfest-- it seems the locals don't care for it as much. The whole city just seemed soo alive. I loved it!

After lunch we decided we waited long enough to head to the fairgrounds.. we didn't know the way.. but everyone assured us to just follow the crowds of people- mostly the traditionally dressed up folk and we would find the way. And that's exactly what we did! A pretty long walk later and there we were.. in front of the biggest "fair" I had ever seen! It looked like a carnival on crack! Huge rides, lots of lights, massive slides.. that's where we got stuck watching first. This huge slide had this conveyor belt that allowed thrill takers to get to the top of the slide. That was the most entertaining thing about it.. because people really needed help maintaining balance on the belt since it went so fast! People were falling and stumbling trying to surf up the belt.

We finally pulled ourselves away from the great free entertainment and managed to roam around the park and get our bearings. OUR GOAL: Obtain Beer. This mission should seem to be really easy, considring Oktoberfest which has almost 7 million liters of beer on hand! However, we quickly learned that the main places to get the beer were inside of the tents which was impossible to get into since we didn't have reservations nor did we get there early enough to wait in line.

We remembered seeing a bar at the entrance of the park next to the slide area and decided to set up tent in there. The place was packed, but we finally got our first toast- Na zdravi as they say in Czech! But Prost in German! Ahh it was delicious- GERMAN EFFICIENCY! We stayed in that "bar" all day pretty much and met tons of ridiculously drunk men! Fran accomplished her goal of the evening and received a hat from one of the guys she was talking to. (Unfortunatley she lost it later in the evening) I received a burger king crown hahaha.. I have no idea why this guy gave it to me.. or why he had it in the first place but, hell I was queen for a while.

Fran was not about to be torn away from these guys and the massive amounts of beer they were supplying her with. They even offered their hotel room to us to crash if we needed-- surprise surprise there. Stephanie and I were getting more and more excited about the rides since there were some "german efficient" ones all around the park. We tried to convince Fran to come with us but she was adamant on staying off the rides, since she was so drunk and afraid she was going to get sick. So we made her promise not to leave the bar and we would be right back after a few rides. Boy.. that didn't happen!

Steph and I rode some awesome twisty turny, high upside rides. I had a missed call from Fran, so we decided to go back. She wasn't there of course! We wandered around and ran into the guys that we left in charge of her and they said that they had to leave and Fran just started walking off anyway. So we continued to try and call and wandered about until miraculously we ran into again with the massive hoards of people! Thank god! Let's continue drinking!

We finally were able to get Fran to do the swing ride which actually goes quite high. Beautiful views of the park though!






There was a carousel bar! Genius! As you can tell from the video.. my voice was shot!

Met some grabby Italians they were nice at first.. but.. gosh grabby and Italian just go hand-in-hand. You can see Fran clinging to Stephanie for dear life! And this is the A-hole that stole Fran's hat! Awww.. she was soo sad!

We met this great guy Jani who let us stay at his place. Our original plan was to just keep partying all night and just try to make it through the weekend by maybe sleeping at the train station. Which we did pass by to get some beer and we saw MANY people share this idea- there were people camped out on the stairs and in the hallways. Crazy.. but Jani saved us and refused to let us be one of those people. He was from Finland and he just moved out to Munich that weekend actually. He let Spanish guys sleep at his place the night before.. so we knew that he was no a creepo. So out of the 3 nights he was in Munich- 2 of them he slept on his couch... aww poor thing! But again.. we thank him for his hospitality. His roommates must've thought he was a pimp since they found 3 girls in his room the next day! haha

Since we didn't get to go into the tents the night before, we decided that we had to go back to the fairgrounds and get into a tent just for the mere sake of taking pictures. You can't go to Oktoberfest and NOT get into a tent! That's just ridiculous. Our original plan was to go to the tent.. take pictures.. have A beer.. and then go out and see the rest of Munich before we had to be back at the train station around 4. yea.. once we entered the beer tent.. it was all over. Amazing to think that these tents are temporary and they take so long to build for just 3 weeks and then its gone!
We went to Hofbrau House and the mayhem began. It was 11 am and I had my first beer of the day and I wasn't about to stop right there. People were just sooo happy!! Singing songs.. drinking beer.. chanting different German sayings! I really should've looked up the words the day before we left.. cuz it would've been nice to chant along with all of them.. but we did pick up.. kinda. Heyy Baby! Oooh! Ahhh! I want to knooow.. if you'll be my girl! Ohh Ahh! hahaha

They play this other specific song about every 10 minutes.. and that's everyone's cue to cheers each other.. gosh I have never Cheered that many people before.. dang and those beer steins are freakin heavy!! I was holding it up with 2 hands by the end of the night! I've truly never had that much fun in my life and I soo wish I could've been there all day! I'm sad we didn't go there Saturday- that would have been crazy... but we were at least able to get in Sunday! That was the greatest! I will definitely go again.. and next time.. I hope to bring my bestest friends ever-- Seth, Ash, Tyson, B-yann, Bex!