Die Weisen

When you think of Germany, there are a few things that instantly spring to mind: beer, big meat meals and lederhosen! And of course, all of those things combine in perfect harmony at the largest drinking festival in the world - Oktoberfest.

Armed with some tips from our friend and host Dana, we headed off to the festival early, stomachs lined with a solid greasy breakfast, beer hands at the ready. The festival grounds are huge - there's apparently 32 beer halls (8 main ones), all decorated inside and out, and (by the end of the day) filled with thousands of Germans and tourists decked in lederhosen and dirndls, with giant 1L steins of beer in every hand.

The festival gets absolutely chockers, but we were lucky enough to see the full spectrum - relatively empty on a weekday where you could get into the beer halls easily, through to shoulder-to-shoulder maddness on the weekend when you couldn't even get within cooee of the beer hall entrance.


To satisfy your beer-induced hunger you could get 1/2 a roast chicken or a roast pork knuckle from the massive roasting stands in the kitchen, or 1 metre of bratwurst sausage and giant pretzels from stands outside.


And if you weren't content to drink beer, stand on the bench seats and tables and sing along with the oom-pah-pah German band, you could always jump on one of the hundreds of sideshow rides on the other side of the grounds. Someone must have had a really sick sense of humour when they added the rides to the festival - beer and rides that twist, spin and go up and down is obviously not a good combination!

We managed to squeeze in about 4 days of Oktoberfest-ing, as well as some Munich and surrounds sightseeing, which we'll write more about in our next blog.