The Happiest Place on Earth

No, for the last few weeks of September and beginning of October it is not Disney, it is Munich, Germany and the great Oktoberfest! Again, taking advantage of my current situation, I hoped on a plane Thursday morning with a buddy from work to go check out what the big deal was, and it was great.

We arrived at the fairgrounds about 1:30 on Thursday afternoon and it was packed. We made our way through a few tents without finding a place to sit before settling for an outside table to get started. I had been offered tickets to join a vendor who had a table starting at 5:00 so we made our way there and enjoyed the atmosphere, the beer and the music inside. Knowing that we had more friends coming in on Friday and that we would want to put on a good show for them, we called it a night relatively early and went back to the hotel.

On Friday we struck out into the city center area. The buildings were just amazing. It was a really nice down town area, so much different than Cologne. It seemed bigger and cleaner.

After finding a place to get some good schnitzel, we made our way to the festivities again. We capitalized on our experience from the day before and found a table outside to start. At about 4 we went to a tent and met Caren, one of the waitresses, as soon as we walked in. She asked if we had a table, when we told her, "No." She told us to wait right there. Two minutes later she came back and led us to a table that was just big enough for all 10 of us.

This was completely different than the night before, since it wasn't a corporate thing, the people were much more relaxed and, um, lubricated. The band played a larger variety of music (I never would have guessed I would be singing John Denver songs in the middle of Munich!) and Caren made sure we were never too empty or hungry.



Unlike Thursday, we gave a much better showing on Friday and stayed until they turned the lights off on us. The really great thing was that with very, very few exceptions, no one got out of hand, the place was very clean, and when it was time to break it up for the night, it was just a bunch of happy drunks finding their way to where-ever they needed to be next, so unlike most events like this in the US.