Alright folks, let's do this thing. I just got back from Oktoberfest today and I'm already blogging about it (will wonders never cease?). Alright, so the flight was uneventful and quite short. After flying into Munich on Friday morning, Ashley, Cara, Laura, Anna and I all got on the metro and made our way to our campsite. It took us a while to find it because the directions we had were seriously wrong. But we finally made it and I took this picture of our campsite which was at Olympic horse stadium (that's how I got this nice aerial view, bleachers).
Then we all made our way to Oktoberfest itself and Ashley and I took the picture when we first arrived, aren't we cute?
Then we got into the Paulaner tent and grabbed ourselves a table and some beers. Paulaner beer is the best beer I've ever tasted. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't (didn't) like beer, but my first sip of Paulaner and all I could think was "wow that's good". Definitely my favorite beer of the whole Oktoberfest. Here's Ashley and I with our first beers of Oktoberfest, Prost! (that's how you say cheers in German)
Yes everybody, I drank beer. A lot of beer. Three liters the first day alone. However, it didn't make me drunk. My tolerance has become something of a marvel at this point and if you will please take note, I don't look drunk in any of my pictures. That's because I wasn't. I drank continuously all day Friday and Saturday and I didn't get drunk, just friendly. I guess that's why Oktoberfest was sooo much fun!
Here's a picture of the five of us in Paulaner, from left to right: Ashley, Cara, Anna, Laura and me
After a while, we made our way to Hofbrau Haus, another tent at Oktoberfest. We met some Australian boys who you can kind of see behind us. Hofbrau Haus didn't have beer that was quite as good (but still better than any other beers I've had outside of Oktoberfest). Here's a pic of all of us at Hofbrau:
Here's Ashley and I having a blasty blast in Hofbrau:
Later in the evening, Ashley and I made friends with some German boys. Oktoberfest is an interesting dynamic because you have to be sitting down to get a beer and in order to sit down you usually have to make friends with someone who already has a table. So we made a lot of friends throughout the course of the weekend.
After spending the rest of the night in Hofbrau Haus, we all made it home to our freezing cold campsite at about 11:30. We set our alarms for 7 am so we could make it into the Hippodrom (our preferred tent) nice and early Saturday morning. Then we proceeded to sleep in freezing cold weather with nothing but our clothes. At least that's all Ashley and I had. We had a sleeping bag but Miss Ashley decided to forget it in Rome. So the first night, all we had were our numerous layers of clothing to keep us warm. I'm a good sleeper so I only woke up a couple of times but it certainly wasn't the best sleep I've ever had and by all accounts, everyone else was miserable from the cold.
The next morning we got up and made it to the Hippodrom by 8:30 am and waited until they let us in at 10. We bought our first beers of the day at that point. Well actually, our only beers. For the rest of the day we had our beers bought for us. It was so cool, the guys we were hanging out with kept pouring their beers into our krugs to keep them full and then ordering more rounds. So we drank continuously for the rest of the day for free. Gotta love being a cute American girl at Oktoberfest! Here are our first beers:
Then, after a couple of hours, we were told we had to move because our table was reserved for someone else. So we made friends with a bunch of pink shirted guys (they all had matching shirts) at the table next door. They were sooo much fun to party with and they kept our beers full. So essentially they were our new best friends. Happy faces:
Ashley and I borrowed their hats for a bit:
Yes, I was drinking with all of the guys and keeping up. I actually got a bunch of compliments from the guys about my drinking skills. Yep, little 20-year-old American girl keeping up with a bunch of European guys. I did my country proud.
Haha, at one point, Ashley decided to switch shirts with this guy. He looked really quite amazing in her shirt and the whole thing was pretty cute:
This guy dropped a ring in his beer so we all threw our rings in and made him finish the beer. Too much fun.
Haha, then this guy wanted to wear my shirt. Definitely did not fit him:
Here's a video of the Hippodrom from the inside and you can see the pink shirt guys before we actually met them. This was at about 10 in the morning so it was still relatively tame:
Well after hanging out with the pink shirt guys for a while, we all got kicked off of that table so they introduced us to some more British people and I made friends with this guy, Simon. He was so funny and he pronounced my name "Pah-ay". So we basically spent the whole time making fun of each other's accents and having a grand old time.
Then later in the evening we had to find a new table so we sat with these guys who were pretty much loaded or something. The bill at their table came while we were still there: 1,800 euros for the evening. Insane.
Then Ashley and I wandered around some more and basically just had a great time dancing around the tent and being silly.
This is a funny picture. No other words necessary.
Yay, we're so cute.
These were a couple of German guys that we met. The one in the blue taught me a lot of German words which was fun. Then he told Ashley that he wanted to kiss me and she tried to convince me to do it. So I had to lie and say that I had a boyfriend, sorry but random makeout sessions are really not my style.
After the tent closed, we all went home and the second night we had a sleeping mat and even more layers on. I was wearing every single piece of clothing I had brought to Germany. But consequently I was much warmer and slept great that night. Then we woke up the next morning and decided to head into Munich and see the sights for our last day before going home. Here's a picture of me in front of the former Nazi headquarters. I believe it was called the Rathaus but I could be wrong.
Here's a picture of Ashley and I in front of a cool statue of some sort. The statue was actually part of a larger monument, but we couldn't get the whole thing in the picture so we just had to settle for the statue.
Then we got lunch at a German restaurant and made our way to the airport. The plane ride back was even shorter and we were at home in no time. I'm pretty tired now though so I'm going to go to bed. I hope everyone's proud of me for being so conscientious about my blogging! Here's a pretty picture of Oktoberfest I took the first night for everyone to leave on:
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