The Adventures of Dave & Cass: Munich - Oktoberfest here we come!!!

Up and at ‘em early this morning, well early for Dave and I – 7:30am (Rob wanted to get going at 4am but that would have really thrown off our European sleeping schedules). We hit the road heading North bound for Germany’s Bavaria for the long awaited Oktoberfest adventure. Belinda and Rob accompanied us for the trip and would be camping for the most of the time we would be in Munich too.

Belinda and Rob getting into the spirit

The trip was fairly easy and although we didn’t end up leaving until just before 9am we still managed to easily get side by side space at Camping Thalkirchen – lucky we changed our plans to a mid week arrival!

All settled in it was time to head to the festival to see what all the fuss was about. The camp ground had a bus running every 30misn dripping everyone off right near the festival entrance. Just arriving in town you could feel and see the atmosphere with over 50% of people dressed up in tract – traditional Bavarian outfits, Lederhosen leather pants for boys and drindels for girls.

WE were amazed to see the whole place , which is huge, covered with rides, sideshows and fairyfloss, sausage and burger stalls and of course the plane hanger sized beer tents.

Getting ready for the fun

We had a bit of a walk around before deciding to try our luck getting a seat inside the Hacker Pschorr tent. It had a great atmosphere with 100’s of tables around a band in a gazebo grandstand in the centre.

Each tent had a team of draft horses to pull their beer carts

We found a table to ourselves after a few failed attempts at asking to share, on the mezzanine level and ordered ourselves some beer. We watched a guy (who we later found out was an Aussie named Hamish) skull 3 beers in around 10 seconds each over the course of around 1 ½ hours – we were very impressed.

As well as getting introduced to the traditional Oktoberfest beer drnking songs, most we had no ideas what the words meant but they all ended in “PROST” (cheers!) and much clinking of glasses.

Carrying 7 beers... no problem

Dave, never one to do hints by halves

The Gang

At 5pm they emptied the tent and opened it for those with dinner reservations only, so we found ourselves once again wandering the carnival streets.

We headed into another of the big beer tents – Lowenbrau. This tent was completely packed and we thought we had no chance of getting onto a table… until we found the Fanatics (Aussie touring group, always at the footy/cricket/tennis etc dressed in yellow) who let us share their table to order and pay for drinks – you must be seated at a table to order and pay for drinks so seats are important!

The band here played traditional German songs as well as more mdern songs. We had an absolutely fantastic nigh dancing on the seats and tables until 10:30pm when the tents close up for the night