!Yo Diggity!

What is Oktoberfest? If you would have asked me this two years ago, I might have said, “isn’t it that festival they do up in Fort Wayne?” (Fort Wayne is a town in Northern Indiana for those of you that don’t know). When I got here to Hungary, I would hear American’s say, “yeah, need to get over and see the real Oktoberfest in Munich there. It’s so close!” So, back in the summer, my friend Simone asked me if I wanted to make plans to go - I said, sure - why not? So she booked the train, booked the hotel, we’re set to go. As usual, work was crazy the week we planned to go and Simone and I were both working up to the last second before it was time to get on the train that Friday. But we made it.

We hopped on the train Friday night to settle into our sleeping car for the 10 hour ride. After the rough couple of weeks we had had at work we were both quite excited to be getting away. We felt a bit like little kids on a slow moving amusement park ride. New things to see and explore in our little cabin…

Quite fancy, all the knobs and buttons. Air control… even radio!! Well ok, so that part didn’t work actually.

Can you believe there was even a PHONE in there?!?! Ok, so that didn’t work either. Just the fact that they have one is pretty darn cool you must admit!!

Can you believe they even had a sink with running water in there?! Ok, I know I probably sound dumb to those who have traveled on a train before… but come on - ya gotta admit that is cool!!

And a picture looking down from the top bunk.

So 10 short hours after we left Budapest, we pulled into the Munich train station. And the 10 hours did seem short because I was sleeping through most of it!

So here we are: Oktober Fest! You see HB in the back there?

So there it is. Our tent and beer of choice: HB. This is short for Hofbrauhaus. (there are some of those funny dots over some of the a’s there but I don’t know how to do that on this computer.)

So we really didn’t know what to expect when we got there. But what we saw was that we might be late. Every seat was taken.

There was no chance that we would be getting inside the tent and every single seat was taken outside of it… well… almost every seat. We did manage to find two!

So, basically what Oktober Fest consisted of was lots of song singing, beer drinking and pretzel eating. That is really honestly about all there was. There was of course costumes (if you will) and carnival rides but mostly the festival is just about the beer and the people who are there. We meet mostly Germans actually… which was good because I suppose that is who you’d like to meet when you go to Germany. But there were also lots of other nationalities there. TONS of Italians, some French we met some Austrailians even! I think that Simone and I are quite the interesting pair to people. They ask us where we are from and we say “Brazil and US”. And then we get the old, “WOW - you sure came a long way!” Yeeeeep. We sure did.

This is the BEST picture from Oktober Fest. These waitresses of all shapes and ages and sizes are huseling around carrying these humongous mugs of beer. They are full liters of HEAVY glass and they are carrying like 8 at a time! It really is quite impressive. I wonder where they work out? So this was the lady that served us… can’t remember her name… Simone - do you? What a SWEET lady though!!

So some of the festivities consisted of singing, lifting the table into the air, high fiving your friends, and just having a jolly good time.

The size of the tents themselves was incredible. Each beer brand had their own tent and their own HUGE trademark. It was cool to see the whole set up.

We did manage to see the inside of the HB tent later in the evening. MADNESS! I thought this was a nice shot of the dedication of one of the beer drinkers we met. He’s toasting the madness while holding his heavy liter with a broken arm even! What a trooper!! haha

Now don’t go thinking that Oktober Fest was all crazy and riots. Some people still managed to get a nap in right in the midst of all of it!

On Sunday, each of the tents had a team of mondo horses pulling their beer. That was actally pretty impressive.

And of course… there were lots of folks in funny clothes. But you know, when everyone’s doing it… it’s not so funny… errrr… is it?

Here’s a good shot of the traditional Bavarian outfit. At least this is what lots of people were wearing so I assume that it is what they look like!

I must say that Sunday night’s train ride was not as exciting as on the way there… going away is never as fun as the anticipation of the unknown that you get on the way. What a fun weekend though. One thing I know for sure now is: Oktober Fest is all about beer!