Oktoberfest

My fourth Oktoberfest… from what I can remember. And all of the photos from inside the beer tents look very similar to those of every other time. I’m sure most of you know the general idea, thousands of people crammed into big beer tents, drinking 1L beers, dancing on bench seats singing along with the live music. So I’m just going to mention what was specific to this years festival. This year was the 200th anniversary of the festival! So that means even more people than usual want to attend. The busiest days are of course the first weekend, which is when we were there. So to ensure that we would be able to get into a tent, we got up at 5.30, left home by 6.00, got to the festival by 6.30, to join the queue which got massive, rowdy and pushy as time went on, to be let into the tent running to claim a table at 9.00, to wait for the keg to be tapped at 12.00 and then still have to wait another hour before finally getting our first beer. But after that, all the stress and impatience disappeared and the good times were on. Big Jimmy had worked up a big thirst and necked his first litre in about 5 minutes.

We couch surfed with Rodrigo, a Columbian guy that stayed with us in Melbourne. The system works! Also caught up with Zhenya and his crew again. The second day Dasha and I were off to a bit of a slow start. By the time we got to the festival everyone else was already inside having fun and security weren’t letting anyone else in. One guy in the queue told us he had been waiting 2 hours. There was only one way in. Cash. In. Pocket. We drank, we danced, we sang, we went on rides and then sometime, somewhere, it was enough.

Some more photos here.