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Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, der Gemütlichkeit

Over two weeks ago now (yes, I’ve been awfully slack, I know), I spent a weekend in a blur of lederhosen and steins at the world-famous Oktoberfest in Munich. For some reason, it’s not an event that attracts many Brits, as far as I can tell, but as even a cursory glance at a copy of TNT will tell you, it’s well and truly on the default itinerary for every antipodean temporary London resident (ethically dubious bull related hijinks in Pamplona? Check! Dawn Service at Anzac cove in Gallipoli? Check! Shared house in Action with 15 other people sharing rooms and a bunch of “dossers” sleeping on the couch? Check! A weekend drinking litre glasses of beer in Germany? Check…)

I travelled over on my own, to meet up over there with the Australians with whom I was tagging along so as to feel like something less of an interloper, but there were plenty of them surrounding me on the plane to help me feel that bit more at home before I even arrived. It was only when we landed that I realised that I’d just arrived on my own late at night in a country where I speak little to none of the language. Rather conveniently, though, I was able simply to follow the accents to find my way into town (after a few seconds of stabbing wildly at the little picture of a Union Jack on the ticket machine screen–or at least for long enough to work out that it wasn’t actually a touch-screen machine–I opted to just push the button that everyone in front of me had pushed, and hope for the best, and then follow everyone else onto the train, hoping for the best.

Luckily, everyone else was heading into town, and I was transported into the city centre quickly, efficiently, and (best of all) quietly enough to listen to my iPod with the volume at a sensible level. The only potential disruption to my listening pleasure was the consistent grumbling of the drunk elderly German who boarded the train with a beer bottle in one hand and proceeded to talk to himself in German for the duration of the trip. I can only assume he was employed by the city council to provide a helpful warning about the dangers of drink to all the crazy foreigners descending on the city to celebrate the wonders of the fizzy orange stuff.

After a suitably early night, we roused ourselves at an ungodly hour in the morning to begin the challenge of finding a table where we could install ourselves for the duration of the opening day. Unfortunately, we had awoken to some rather miserable weather and the kind of pathetic but constant rain that’s more characteristic of London in October, than the sunny September Munich we’d all been expecting (I had even returned to the flat the previous morning from half way down the street to collect my almost forgotten but entirely redundant shorts and flip flops). The effect of the weather was that no one wanted to sit at any of the thousands of outside tables and instead had already packed themselves in to the tents. With the knowledge that you can’t get served a drunk at Oktoberfest unless you are seated in the back of all our minds, things were starting to look rather bleak.

After some time we eventually discovered one table at the back of the Lowenbraü tent that appeared to contain neither a lot of thirsty Germans nor a small reserved sign, and we eagerly snapped it up. It wasn’t quite that easy, though, because we still weren’t sure whether the table was in fact reserved–after a while one of the waitresses produced some more reserved signs for the table. When we asked her, she seemed to suggest that we could sit there in spite of this, but at the same time told other people to simply go away. Had she misunderstood us, or did she just not like the look of the others? At this point there were still several hours to go before the official opening of the festival (and our first beer of the day) so we sent an advance party out into the rain to hunt for an alternative. Sadly they returned with just some comedy Oktoberfest hats, but no table.

Ah, but it was all ok, because our waitress did happen to like the look of us after all: shortly before 12 she asked us if we could squish down the end to let a German bowling team join us on our table, and at that point we realised we were probably safe. After what seemed like an interminable wait, the procession arrived in the hall and the beer began to flow. Things get a little bit hazy from this point onwards. I can remember being consistently amazed by the ability of the waitresses to carry 10 or 11 steins in one go (it’s quite a sight to behold). I can remember that the German bowlers turned out to be very entertaining company–they taught me the words to the repeated-every-5-minutes oompah, oompah drinking song “Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, der Gemütlichkeit”, for example (although admittedly those in fact are the words to the repeated-every-5-minutes oompah, oompah drinking song, it’s still something of a feat after several steins). They were also engaging in entertaining challenges like timing each others trips to the toilet. He who takes longest buys the next round, apparently.

At the same time, I don’t remember one of our party emptying the contents of his stomach into his stein (and no, it wasn’t me), and I don’t remember quite how I came to fall asleep on a chair in a bar some hours after the beer hall had closed. I do remember waking up to find a couple of Germans guys poking me to see if I was still alive (presumably), and thus realising that it might be time to go home to the hotel to sleep.

On the Sunday, things were much calmer, and we arrived at the Paulaner tent with plenty of empty tables to choose from. With none of the “no beer until noon” rules in effect on the opening day, we had our first steins in front of us at 9.30 am, and consequently I had to stop drinking by mid afternoon, conscious of my early flight back to London (and straight to work) the following morning. We rounded the weekend off by sampling some of the fairground rides (surely a dangerous combination–very drunk people and machines that tip you upside down at high speed), and heading for a kebab.

Anyway, it’s all rather good. I strongly advise you to go (but maybe just the one time will be enough…)