Oktoberfest in Munich

Phillip and I are back home now, but I want to post pictures from our last weekend in Europe. I'm just now getting to them because of jet lag and a visit to our ranch. Also, we took over 700 pictures that weekend, so it took me awhile to transfer them from the cameras and iPhones and then go thru them for the dozen or so suitable for use.

After we left Prague on Friday, October 5, we returned by train to Becky's house in Lupburg. I walked to the Lupburg castle with her. I've already posted pictures from the castle when Phillip went the prior weekend (while I was working on a blog post!). After the castle tour, Becky offered me the option of a walk thru the countryside or a visit to her local beer garden. No hesitation, beer garden it was! Becky and I enjoyed talking with the proprietor, Hans, who speaks some English and helps Becky with her German pronunciation. Becky called David and he and Phillip joined us, Phillip for a beer, David for a soda (he doesn't like the taste of beer). The beer garden is a two-minute walk from Becky's house, uphill to get to it, downhill to return home.

Becky, David, Ryan and Reese took us on a three-stop tour on Saturday. Our first stop was a chocolate store with an African theme. Reese loved getting chocolate money (coins of chocolate wrapped to look like euros), I got mint chocolate sticks, and all the adults had delicious coffee. Next, we headed for our main destination: Regensburg. Regensburg is a UNESCO World Heritage site, founded by the Romans in 179 AD. Crusaders marched across its Stone Bridge on their way south. As with most of these locations, the Cathedral is worthy of a visit. The main one here was the Cathedral of St. Peters. Although the stained glass was not a spectacular as that from the cathedral we visited in Switzerland, this one had cow gargoyles.

We were in Regensburg during lunchtime, so Becky took us to Historic Wurstkuche, the oldest continuously open public restaurant in the world. On the bank of the Danube River, the building was erected in 1135 AD as a construction office for the Stone Bridge. When the bridge was finished in 1146, they turned the building into a restaurant. Its specialty was boiled meats until 1806 when grilled sausages became the offering. For 3 euro, we had the best wurst on a roll with sauerkraut and mustard that we ate in Germany! Sure glad they switched from boiled meat.

Regensburg's Old Town was picturesque, but some of its appeal was lost to me because of all the modern shops and buildings amid the old buildings. Even more recent historical locations had not been preserved. We left Regensburg after lunch and stopped at Burglegenfeld, another town that Becky had visited and wanted us to see. It has a castle on the hill that, according to Becky, now houses persons with mental illness. Almost every town still has its castle.

Unfortunately, on this Saturday afternoon, almost everything in Burglegenfeld was closed. We walked around the main square area and admired the fountain statue, a man slaying a dragon. Since we had a big day planned for Sunday, we headed back to Lupburg.

Sunday morning, we caught the 8:15 am train for the two-hour ride to Munich. The closer we got to Munich, the more crowded the train became. Standing room only by the time we arrived. Oktoberfest in Munich is held in a specific area of town, about 1-1/2 km from the train station. It reminded me of the Texas State Fairgrounds. No backpacks allowed (I'd left mine at Becky's and borrowed a small purse from her) and security glanced inside any bag or purse as people went in. Unlike the Texas State Fair, no entry fee!

The main walking area was lined with beer halls (called beer tents, but they were actual structures, not tents) and food and souvenir vendors. Paulander, a brand of beer, had several tents like this, but five other breweries, such as Lowenbrau, were represented. Notice in the picture that the walkway doesn't seem crowded. It wasn't then, but after lunch, it became tremendously crowded! This was the last day of the Oktoberfest, with good weather, so many people came to visit. We were joined by Bryan, a co-worker of David's.

Since it was before lunch, we weren't quite ready for a beer yet, but we did walk thru a beer tent soon after we arrived. We walked thru several during the afternoon and they were all decorated differently, but the layout was similar in every tent. Tables with benches that seat about twenty people each filled the huge space. Most of the beer tents also serve food, so people were eating, drinking, and singing. All the beer tents had a band, usually in the very middle of the tent.

The Oktoberfest venue also had a large midway with rides. Reese had been looking forward to riding a particular one, as she had just grown to 48 inches tall. Unfortunately, the minimum height for her selected ride was 1.4 meters, about 55 inches. Reese was heartbroken, but we walked past that ride and found the ferris wheel that she could ride. She rode it with Becky and Ryan and recovered some from her disappointment. After the ferris wheel, we decided it was time to sit down and enjoy a beer. The first beer tent we went into had no available seating. We found seating at the Lowenbrau tent's courtyard area. The drinking age in Germany is 13 years old with one's parents. Ryan is 13 and had never had a beer, so Becky let him have his first drink of beer from her beer.

And, like David, he did not care for the taste of the beer at all! I wasn't sure he'd even be able to swallow the sip he took, but he did and promptly passed the beer back to Becky. Ryan can now say that his first taste of beer was at Oktoberfest in Munich! And speaking of those beers, there's only one size available, called "mass." 33.8 ounces in the mug. Massive is what it is. Phillip, Bryan, Becky, and I finished our beers and we decided we needed more food than the pretzels we were eating, so we left the beer tent and found a sausage vendor. Good wurst, but not as good as Regensburg sausage.

After lunch, we found two more rides that Reese was tall enough to ride. Ryan, such a good big brother (and still with a lot of kid in him even if he was almost the tallest person of our group) rode with Reese as she went several times on the two rides:

Now, time to find a beer tent with room for all of us to sit at one table. The Oktoberfest grounds were becoming more crowded, but we were able to find a place, in about the center back of this tent:

We ordered our four beers and three sodas, as Ryan definitely did not want to drink beer! The noise level was tolerable, fairly loud, but you could still lean in and talk to people around you. The band played American songs -I heard John Denver and Neil Diamond - and a lot of the crowd sang the chorus with the band. It also played more recent American and German songs. The common thread of the songs, like "Sweet Caroline," was the tendency of the song to get people standing on their bench, raising a glass and singing along. 

As you see from the level of beer in Becky and Phillip's beer mugs, we had not been there long when this picture was taken. Becky was not yet standing on her bench, singing. No, I didn't stand on the bench, even after finishing this beer and starting on the next round that Bryan bought for us. 

One of the things that we found amazing was that the atmosphere was truly civil. With the crowded space, you couldn't help but to bump into someone or be bumped into. Groups (not us!) had two empty mugs in front of each member, so they were fairly intoxicated and boisterous, but nobody said a cross word. It was just a fun place with everyone there to have a great time. FYI, the pin that Becky bought for Phillip says "Sugar Daddy." We did not want to Becky and David to be negatively impacted by our visit, so Phillip insisted on paying for the kids' rides, the food, and everything he could. 

Of course, that pin served as a conversation starter with people, like the pretzel vendor in our beer tent! She is dressed in the outfit of the day, a dirndl. Her dirndl, however, is not quite traditional as it is low-cut. The traditional ones don't show any cleavage. The vendors and a lot of the young guests were wearing dirndls that emphasized cleavage. Probably half the women in the beer tent were wearing dirndls and over half the men were wearing the traditional lederhosen (leather pants). Bryan was wearing lederhosen, which he said was more comfortable than he expected, and the traditional gingham plaid shirt. 

The pretzels were sold everywhere at Oktoberfest. They apparently served to soak up the beer in one's stomach. If you are on low-carb diet, don't come to Oktoberfest! Our beer tent also served roasted chicken, which Becky ordered for the kids to eat. After Ryan and Reese ate, she and I picked at the bones of the half of a chicken. Quite tasty and well-seasoned.

As I mentioned, Bryan ordered a second round of beer for us in this tent, but we weren't able to finish it. After all, we did need to be able to walk back to the train and make that two hour ride home! David had planned for us to leave around 2 pm, before the grounds and outbound trains became too crowded, but we were having so much fun that it was the 4 pm train we ended up on. Standing room only for us until its stop in Regensburg, where a lot of people got off to make train connections to other cities. 

About that beer we were drinking, Phillip thought that it might have a lower alcohol concentration since people were consuming so much of it without ill effect. I checked, and it is not lower! By government regulation, beer sold at Munich Oktoberfest must have a minimum 6% alcohol content. Most American lager-style beers have between 4-5% alcohol by volume. Another quick note, the beer tent restrooms were plentiful, clean, and well-stocked. Those Germans know how to throw a beer party!

On Monday, we left the wonderful hospitality of Casa Becky, with lots of hugs for David, Becky, Ryan, and Reese, and took the train to Frankfurt. Tuesday morning, we went to the Frankfurt Airport to head back to DFW. Our plane was delayed by an hour an a half because storms were expected that afternoon in the Fort Worth area. The weather predictions were correct and our plane landed just after the storms cleared the airport. Back home, safe and sound!