Ewan's Musings

Munich and Oktoberfest

Right I'm back.

Wow, that was fun. Having never been to Germany before (or abroad since I was 11 and went on holiday to Minorca) the whole thing was just so different. The centre of Munich didn't look that much different ot the centre of any other city, but small things made me take notice.

The first (and obvious one) was how much you could get by without knowing any german - pretty much everyone had a basic grasp of English. Which was good, becase even though my rusty knowledge of (bits of) German came back to me, it wasn't really needed. The Metro train makes all its announcements in both German and English (you don't see that on the London Underground). the Metro was the only place I saw any graffitti - scarily it was in English (well the words were. The grammar was a bit... weird).

Anyway, after all the business was done (hey, I'm not telling, ask me again summer '04, okay?) I met up with Adrian from FreEPOC and asked him to show me the sights of Munich. His decision was to take me to a Beer Festival (who was I to argue, even though the short trip meant I had no kilt - which is normally de rigeur for attending drinking out of town). And not any Beer Festival - the Oktoberfest.

It's beyond me trying to explain the sheer scale and well-behaved hundreds of thousands of people attending. The first tent (tent? they spend 8 months building them!) had 20,000 drinkers, so probably another 3,000 staff, pluss everything to kepp them in drink till the wee hours. Plus an Oompah Band.

But the real highlight? Not the half a duck I was servedin the Bavarian Food Tent (where we finally got seats to drink some beer), but seeing something in the wild I had only seen on film before... A Time Machine...

Yes, they really exists. Mmmm...

Posted by Ewan at October 1, 2003 09:00 AM