What the Oktoberfest Just Happened?

Wow. Oktoberfest. I'm in college, I like to party, (I also like to diligently apply myself to my studies and all that stuff), but Oktoberfest was almost too much. Almost. In case you don't know, Oktoberfest is essentially a gigantic carnival that celebrates all kinds of German beer. There are rides, games, places to get food, and of course, beer tents. What differentiates Oktoberfest from a normal carnival is that every single person has been drinking for most of the day, and it is wall to wall people everywhere. My Northeastern friends and I booked a trip to Oktoberfest the day after we were accepted into the study abroad program; of all the places to visit and things to do, we knew Oktoberfest had to be one of them, if nothing more than to say we had been there at least once in our lives. We arrived in Munich on Friday, checked in to our hotel, and went straight to the fairgrounds. The fairgrounds are massive; there are people everywhere, and it is extremely crowded. However, as it was Friday, we were able to get into a beer garden with no wait, and sat down at a table right away. The Germans know how popular this event is, so they make sure to keep the gardens and tents well staffed with servers. Despite the massive crowds, it took us less time to be eating and drinking at Oktoberfest than it would take at your neighborhood Applebees. They have several food options, but we chose to indulge in some German sausage and sauerkraut, (which was delicious).

After spending some time in the tent, we went outside to explore more of the fairgrounds, and ended up sitting at an outdoor table with some native Germans, who were likely each 5 or 6 liters of beer deep. I should mention here that when you order a beer at Oktoberfest, it comes in a liter sized mug; a liter is 34 ounces, which is almost 3 full beers. They taught us chants and cheers, (which we used the next day), and laughed profusely at our friend who could barely keep his eyes open because he was so tired. After awhile, my friends and I got separated, and I went on some rides with one friend. Bumper cars and carnival games are fun when you go to Six Flags with your family, but they really, really fun at Oktoberfest.

That was pretty much our friday; after Oktoberfest closed for the day we went to the hotel for some much needed rest. On saturday we woke up at about 7:00 am to go to the fairgrounds as you need to wake up at such an ungodly hour in order to get  there early enough to get inside a tent on a weekend. Let me show you why:

Every tent is that full, and every tent has a crowd twice that size waiting to get in, so its a good idea to get to the fairgrounds early in the morning. That's another thing, they start serving everything at 9:00 am, so we had already been up for 2 hours by the time the event officially began. Then, I got a pretzel. Giant pretzels are a staple of Oktoberfest; I wish I had a picture to show you, but it is simply a giant soft pretzel, about 3 times the size of one you could buy on the street in any major city. Maybe it was the lack of any sustenance so far that day, but that pretzel was absolutely delicious. With the pretzel, we of course sampled the beer from that tent.

Saturday was very similar to Friday. We hung out in the tent, sang German songs, danced, cheered, laughed, cried, (OK nobody cried, ) and I even rode the bumper cars again. I would have liked to explore Munich a bit more, but I didn't think I would have much luck convincing 20 other college students to leave Oktoberfest and "go exploring" Still, it was a once in a lifetime experience and I'm very glad I had the opportunity to go. That's all for now, sorry this blog was a bit later than usual, but there should be another one within a week.