2006-09-18 - 3:42 p.m.
Well, Oktoberfest was pretty much nothing like I expected.
We had checked with the front desk of our wonderful, glorious hotel to see what time the festival started. Jesse, for reasons unbeknownst to me, had his heart set on seeing the opening ceremonies. My thoughts were one a different aspect of the festival.
Anyway, we determined that they started at noon, but we should go early to get a seat. We tried, and even went so far as to set the alarm, but in the end we slept in, and barely made it to the festival grounds by noon. Just as we got there, we heard the guns go off to start the festival, so we figured that we had missed the opening.
We went into one of the big beer tents, and it was filled with people, on benches, drinking beer. It being noon, and still a little early, even for us, we left, and bummed around the city for most of the day. We spent a lot of time doing what we like to in strange cities: explore the department stores. We ride the escalators up and down, check out the book section, and sometime the music or DVD sections, and then look for another store. If there are a couple of them near each other, we can be busy for hours! "So Will, what do you remember about Europe?" "Well, they had some nice department stores..."
Anyway, after a stimulating afternoon, we headed back to the festival at about four. I had not known exactly what it would be like, but I had an idea that there would be beer, and not much else. I was wrong, not that anyones surprised.
Most of the festival is devoted to a giant midway, with all sorts of rides. This is pretty much like you would see in North America, actually. There are also booths scattered around, some selling food (mostly sausages and pretzels) and some selling shots of alcohol, and even a couple wine booths. There were beer tents, giant beer tents, but from the outside they blended in. It was much more of a family affair than I had expected.
After a sausage and a look at the midway, we decided to go into one of the beer tents and have a drink. The only problem was that there were no free seats, and the waitresses wouldn't serve you if you were standing. These waitresses, by the way, were scary. They looked ordinary, just smallish older German women, but then you would see them with six or eight full litre mugs of beer in their arms, hurrying through the crowd, and you would get out of the way pretty quickly!
With no luck getting a seat in the first tent, we tried another. This one we couldn't even get into, it was totally full, and there were lots of guards. By this point I was getting sick of it, and pretty disillusioned to boot.
We tried one more time, but without luck. We could not get beer at Oktoberfest. However, my dad didn't raise me to give up, and so we had a shot at the shot tent, and left. Five hundred yards from the edge of the festival we found a restaurant with lots of room, serving the same beer in the same size mugs (one litre), for thirty five cents less than at the festival.
After drinking more than could be considered strictly healthy, and with a warm glow to us, we headed back to the festival some hours later. This time around the midway was more exciting, and we spent some time watching that, before heading back to our hotel.
The next morning was a bit of a trial, but we eventually made it to Nuremberg. Turns out that we could only get room for two nights, instead of four, and that there is not much to do in Nuremberg. This knowledge in hand, we made the obvious decision, and are heading to Prague tomorrow. We'll spend an extra day in Prague, and an extra day in Bratislava to make up for Nuremberg.
