It has been a years planning in the process and anticipation was building to a crescendo. 12 Kiwi mates about descend upon the world famous Octoberfest (beerfest) in Munich, Germany. We packed light, only the “beer” essentials were required. Our journey began at Heathrow terminal 5, probably the flashest terminal that we have seen. The trip was only a couple of hours long and we enjoyed sandwiches and sudoku’s on the flight. The first thing you notice when you travel to any foreign country is the language, fortunately the German’s are quite fluent in English and a friendly German lady gave us some handy tips on negotiating the Munich subway. The subway was so smooth unlike London’s rickety tubes. We arrived about 10ish at our motel “the pension central” which was indeed very central. Feeling a bit peckish, SK and I went for a wander around the block and bought a traditional big German pretzel. It was so salty! It was quite entertaining trying on our costumes, some were a weeny bit small, Sarah tried hers on and felt like old mother hubbard.
The next days events may be a bit hazy but I will try my best to piece together the events. We had breakfast at the motel then got into our kit and started walking to the beerfest. We got some looks and a few comments from the locals, obviously our costumes were not very authentic. Although we thought we looked the real deal in our ledinhosen. Sarah was the best dressed, here purchase of the cute red apron was a masterful touch. Mel’s friend Michael was instrumental in our beerfest experience, he organized tables in the beer tents for the 12 of us. You must be seated at a table in order to be served your beer. The beer was served in the traditional 1 litre stein, a huge glass handle, which we worked out held the equivalent of 5 standard drinks. We arrived at the first beer tent (a temporary facility which cost over 1 million Euro’s to erect) around 11 am. It was still early and the band was just warming up. Then the beers started flowing and the place livened up with the band and the crowd in full german chorus. The atmosphere was extremely festive and everyone was out to have a good time. We tried to pace our drinking as it is easy to blow out early. We were lucky enough to enjoy a meal of pancake soup and duck with dumplings. I should mention that the beerfest is not just a drinking marathon, it is truly a wonderful festival with all sorts of carnival food from candyfloss, ginger bread (in the shape of hearts) german sausages, pretzels to name but only a few. The rides were a definite highlight as well with some real stomach churner roller coaster rides, twisty turny pendulum swings and scary gory rides. Sarah and I had great fun on the rides after the first beer tent, I had a hoarse voice for the rest of the day. Dodging unsuccessfully a massive downpour we made it soaking wet to the second beer tent. Again we had a table reserved, so we settled into the warm smoky tent partied the rest of the night away! PROST! (German for cheers). Day 2 in Munich, well hangover’s are not a very pleasant experience and this one was no exception. But determined not to let it beat us we got up early and checked out some of the sights. Sarah went with some of the crew to Dachau an infamous german concentration camp. Frighteningly real and brutely shocking are words which can describe it. The “death” experiments on some of the inhabitant was particularly gruesome. Preferring something a little less morbid, I went with Toby, Conan and Mace to the BMW Museum, situated by the Olympic stadium. This museum was devoted to innovative and elegant cars and bikes. We were also lucky enough to do a factory tour, which showed the entire manufacturing process of the 3 series BMW sedan and touring car. They pump out 900 cars a day in an amazing automated process. In the afternoon it was time for round 2 of the beerfest, very similar to round 1 except we didn’t have an allocated table so we had to try and chime in on one. This proved quite hard, but eventually sorted out a few seats. PROST!
Day 3, Time to say goodbye Munich hello Salzburg. We caught a double decker train to the picturesque city of Salzburg in Austria. Salzburg is a historic city, home to the famous Mozart. The city of 150,000 boasts beautiful cathedrals, cute coble stone streets, a turquoise river running through its centre and a hilltop fortress/castle. The streets are very clean, locals were friendly and there was a chocolate shop on every corner. We had a great time in Salzburg, we went out for a few really nice meals and hiked up to the fortress for some great views. We stayed in a youth hostel on the outskirts of town which had some strange reception hours. Day four, we were flying out at midday so we just milled around taking in the city and had a coffee before saying Al fuido sae (goodbye). The end of a great holiday with a great bunch of people (Hamish, Sarah, Richie, Mel, Matt, Birgit, Hayley, Mace, Toby, Conan, Hayden and Emma) PROST!
