I'll never drink beer again!

A Liter of Beer!

Its been a week now since we got back from Oktoberfest in Munich, and I still don't think I can drink a beer.  I can't tell you how many I consumed while there, but there was beer everywhere you looked, and those mugs are heavy!

Ready with real Lederhosen!

Travers and I took an early morning flight on the Friday after we got back from San Francisco.  We couldn't check into our hotel yet, so we decided to walk around the town in search of some nylons for me (just in case my legs got cold while wearing my too short dirndl), and some wool socks for Travers so that his lederhosen costume would look a bit more authentic. We found a really cute store that was selling authentic lederhosen and dirndls and we knew this would be the best place to get Travers some socks. Well, an hour and a couple hundred euros later, he walked out with an entire outfit!  (The sales girl was cute. He even bought a shirt that matched the purple checkered dress she was wearing. Ha!)  We met our friend Mike at the Hofbrauhaus for lunch, and after some sausages and a beer, we had convinced Mike he needed to go back to the store and get himself some real lederhosen too!

Not your traditional dirndls!

So once Mike's wife Shelley arrived, her and I got dressed in our dirndls and off the four of us went to the Oktoberfest beer tents. We had no idea what to expect but were not prepared for the thousands and thousands of people there. The metro was packed, and the walk to the tents was filled with people, some on their way in, and others stumbling or being carried out! 

Inside Fischer Vroni!

 We found our way to a tent called Fischer Vroni. After figuring out which tables were the non-reserved ones (apparently to reserve a table, it should be done a year in advance, have a minimum of 10 people and put a deposit down), we squeezed our way onto the end of a table and began to make friends with those around us.  We drank the largest beers,  ate the biggest pretzels and tried to sing along to the famous " Ein Prosit" song. Finally, a few hours later, we decided it was time to get some real food and a change of location.  We said goodbye to our fair-weather friends and headed out to the masses walking around outside. 

After eating a delicious sausage, and a few failed attempts at getting in other tents, we made it to the Lowenbrau tent. Unfortunately, like all the other tents, this one was too crowded inside and the security guys at the doors weren't letting anyone else in.  We were almost going to give up, but leave it to my husband to talk his way into the tent!  We ended up bribing one of the doormen and after a few moments we were inside the Lowenbrau tent!  This is one of the more popular tents. They had a band that was playing all sorts of popular songs like Sweet Caroline! and other fun songs to sing along to. One song that was played at all the tents all the time is "Hey Baby (I wanna know if you'll be my girl)." It was really odd to me that this was such a popular song throughout the entire festival, but somehow it got people in the spirit and everyone knew the words!

The Mustache Buddies

We made it back to the hotel around midnight and woke up early the next morning to do it all over again! We were meeting up with co-workers of Travers and they had gotten an early start (9am) on Saturday. We made it there around 10am and people were already being carried out or were passed out. I assume they had just kept on going from the night before! 

A close up of the staches.

As a side note, before this trip, Travers, and our friends Mike and Dave made a deal that they would grow out their beards and shave everything before Oktoberfest except for their mustaches.  It was that perfect something extra that made this weekend all the more funny and memorable!

Angie holding 5 mugs!

And we realized our friend, Angie, is the strongest woman (other than the beer girls) as she was able to hold 5 of the beer mugs in one hand! Some of the beer girls hold up to 7 or 8 in one hand. They have strong forearms and wear wristguards.

Hofbrauhaus Tent!

The rest of Saturday was much of the same: drinking beers, eating pretzels and sausage, and singing along to the songs that we now knew all the words to. We had made it into the Hofbrauhaus Tent, which was extremely filled with people all having a great time.

Don't worry mom, we really weren't that drunk!

The final group of six!

We made it back to the hotel early evening, and all rested up for a few hours. I was surprised we all made it back out again at 9pm at the real Hofbrauhaus for more beer and dinner.  By this time I was very sick of drinking beer, and my hand had a slight bruise on it from holding the heavy glass for the past two days.  But it was such an amazing experience and so fun to see all the different people and cultures that come to this event. We will most likely do it again next year, now that Travers has his real lederhosen. Not sure I can do two days in a row again, but its worth a try.

As for now, I definitely won't be drinking beer anytime soon.