Oktoberfest...

... was not what I expected. I had anticipated mobs of tourists falling all over each other drunkenly in big tents. Some pretzles. Maybe some dudes in funny attire. Yes, fine, there was actually a lot of that. However, the number of locals in attendance exceeded the amount of tourists by quite a bit. And they were all decked out in old school Munich 1700's getups! We were actually really confused when we got onto the subway and started seeing people dressed like that. I was convinced that they were just proud of their heritage and dressed like this year round. This may seem obvious and silly to you, but there were SO MANY people dressed like this, and of all ages- men, women, grandparents, babies, teenagers, everyone. All of these people wouldn't be going to a beer drinking festival, would they?? In fact they would. I didn't realize the extent of the festival. When we walked in for the first time I was in awe. Mobs of people were walking amoungst street vendors selling everything from pretzles to schnitzle. There were rides for all energy levels- merry-go-rounds, crazy swings that were 200 feet in the air, roller coasters, flume rides, the list goes on. In fact we couldn't even find a beer tent at first, we just walked around gazing at everything. I seriously felt like I was in Disney World.

Of course when we did finally find the tent, the awe struck us again. These tents fit 10,000 people. Each! We enter to see mobs of drunken Germans dancing on tables, singing to the live music and drinking beer out of mugs that hold 1 liter. Overwhelmed, we walk toward an area of the room that seems to have emty seats. A couple guys called us over, "hey, you can sit with us, we could use some more Americans." Was it that obvious? They were a couple army guys from Texas, and they took quite good care of us that night. They bought us a round, and food, and a couple souvenier photos that one of the "beer maidens" had snapped of the two of us. It was definitely a lot of good time but we were in bed by 7 pm.

The next day we did a lot of walking around and actually riding some of the rides (some of them were way too scary- these Germans are crazy!). We went in and out of a few different tents before settling on the HofBrau tent. We were a little concerned that we weren't going to be able to find seat- this was the most crowded tent and in order to be served you needed to be in one. A maiden with a handful of beers sees us and pawned a few off on us. She wasn't too concerned about our lack of seats. Shortly thereafter we made friends with a group of German and Belgian guys and enjoyed a slightly more paced out version of the singing and crazy Germans dancing on tables that happened the day before.

By the time we finished up with the UK, Ireland, and Munich I was ready to be done with beer for quite a while.