Ein Prosit!

It has now been 26 days since I left the last tent at Oktoberfest, and I THINK I am finally recovered enough to tell the tale.

*PRO TIP – take Gatorade mix in your carry on so you can make your own Gatorade.  I wouldn’t be here today without it.

London Stansted —> Nuremberg

Yes, I know Oktoberfest is in Munich, but flying into Munich from anywhere during the weeks of Oktoberfest is insanely expensive, so we chose a cheaper nearby airport Thursday night, stayed at a hotel near said airport that night, then took a train from Nuremberg to Munich Friday morning.

We had a total of 7 people in our group for Oktoberfest this year, so the only reasonable option for all of us to stay together and be in walking distance to the festival was a hostel.  As you may have noticed at this point in our lives together on this blog, I am not a fan of hostels, but The 4 You Hostel was clutch and we had a blast there.  We took over a room, our 3 other roommates probably hated us, but we all survived.  In my opinion, being in walking distance is a huge plus when attending Oktoberfest.

Two of us arrived in Munich Friday morning and shortly after, a third member of the crew arrived so we made our way to a beer garden in the city for some schnitzel and litres of beer, naturally.  Soon after lunch, we met the other four squad members back at the hostel and returned to said beer garden for more litres.

What do you do after drinking multiple litres of beer?  Go shopping for dirndls and lederhosen, OF COURSE.  I bought my dirndl last year, but strongly advised all other members of our group to purchase outfits and we were all successful.

Being that I am now old and can’t handle multiple days of drinking very well, I told myself I would not be consuming tons of beer on Friday night.  My ideal situation was to be rested up to take on Oktoberfest on Saturday.  I think by this point, you can tell this did not go as planned.  The hostel gave us all 3 free drink coupons, and after our beer garden and shopping adventures, we decided to drink at the hostel bar for approximately one year.  But when the beers come in every size possible, why wouldn’t you??

Cut to Saturday morning.  It was the goal to get to the tents fairly early, so we all drug our beer soaked bodies out of bed and began the process of mental and physical preparation for the day ahead.  By this I mean I chugged gatorade and took an anti nausea pill, TBH.

It was a struggle, but we made it!

Hofbräu here we come!

The Hofbräu tent is generally known to be where all the foreign people (read: Americans) go, but it has a large space in the middle with standing room, and it is a huge party from the minute it opens.  We had a great time in there.  We lost various group members throughout the day, but they all made their way back and eventually we had to leave in search of dinner.

After inhaling some bratwurst, I won’t lie, the group started to lose steam.  Classic food coma after day drinking situation.  I was not having this, so I told them all to get their lives together because we didn’t come all the way to Germany to leave Oktoberfest at 7pm.  It seemed harsh at the time, but they all thanked me later (that’s what I’m telling myself.  Sorry again, guys.)

We waited in line for a little bit and eventually all of us got into the outdoor beer garden at Löwenbräu.  We found a table (miracle) and resumed our beer consumption until a scary women came and shouted it was time to leave and attempted to tip our table.  Point taken.

We did it! Day one was a success!

Now let’s talk about day two…

Because of my first experience at Oktoberfest 8 years ago (if you know, you know), I have never tried to survive multiple days at the festival.  This was the year.  I was going to do it! Or at least try.  I had two goals for the day: don’t die, and make a friend who wasn’t American (seriously, you can’t escape Americans).

The four boys in the group decided to take Sunday to go on an adventure outside of Munich for the day, so it became ladies day at Oktoberfest!  Let me tell you, these ladies were feeling ROUGH.  We definitely moved a bit slower, but we made it to the grounds around noon, checked out the beer wagons in front of all the tents for the last day of the festival, and set out in search of food.

Food went well for some of us, and not so well for others.  Things were looking grim for these hungover ladies, but we (begrudgingly) went and found a tent.  We decided on Augustiner and entered with no line.  Once we got inside, we quickly realized the other tents have a very different atmosphere than Hofbräu early in the day.  Luckily, we found a table with spots on the end so we could sit down and try not to die.  We ordered beers and I don’t think a single one of us thought we would last longer than one beer, if that.

Well I am here to tell you a story of perseverance and triumph.  After finishing our first beers (some of us after 3 hours), we were ALIVE.  We managed to hold our spot at the table all day, and made some fun friends, and some unwanted creepy friends.  We stayed in this tent until it closed and it was a BLAST.  Don’t let the slow quiet atmosphere in the morning fool you, this place can rage. The boys even made it back and found us to dance on tables and play with sparklers at the end of the night!

I am happy to report that I accomplished both goals for the day, I didn’t die, and we made friends with the sweetest German couple.  1/2 of said couple pictured here. Photo or it didn’t happen, am I right?

After closing down the tent and making it home alive, we decided it was a good idea to stay up and drink 100 more beers in the hostel bar.  That bar will get you, watch out.  Needless to say, 11am checkout was oppressive.

In summary:

Prost to you, Oktoberfest.

Huge shout out to Find My Friends, without this we would all quite literally be lost.

Auf wiedersehen.