Oktoberfest Take 1

message from jessica:

so i think i might be getting old. our flght to europe was not as easy as i remember and lack of
sleep combined with german beer made the entire situation that much worse. after getting one
night sleep and a fair amount of coffee, i was feeling prepared to brave oktoberfest. i knew i
was in for an interesting time after seeing 50 year old men in lederhosen stumbling out of the
gates singing in german at the top of their lungs.

walking into the largest beer tent at the festival, schottenhammel, i could not have imagined so
many people in one collapsable tent. with over 500 tables surrounding a band in the middle, the
place was packed without a vacant seat to be found. those more rowdy attendees where literally
dancing on their seats or tables swinging giant steins of beer. speaking of the steins........the
waitresses carry about 15-20 steins at one time! and believe me, they do not take kindly to dumb
tourists walking aimlessly in their way.

after a short and kinda frustrating attempt to find seating, we ended up leaving and just heading
to a bar down the street. i am certainly not brave enough to ask a group of rowdy germans to
kindly move over and make room for the american tourists.

as for today, we are headed to neuschwanstein castle approximately, 2 hours outside munich. i will
fill you all in later about it. hope you are all well. cheers!

a message from daniel thomas.....

The highlight of my evening was a food and beer tour that took us to the oktoberfest museum where
we learned the history of the festival and sampled the different kinds of German beer. Working for
Yard House I was obviously intrigued at how beer is such a part of Bavarian culture. People
respect the tradition of beer here and, although there were several people who drank too much at
oktobefest, everyone was so happy. All I could keep thinking was how a festival like this in the
states would probably result in rioting and fighting. Here eveyone has too much reverance and
people are happy drunks! Anyhow, we ended the tour at the beer pub where hefeweizen was born and
my enthusiasm was shown in how fast by beer(s) seemed to disappear. We met a couple from New
Zealand and spent the rest of the night drinking and sharing stories with them. We found out that
they were going on a 'Ghost Tour' of the city to its supposedly haunted places. We decided to join
them. It was not scary. It went something like this: 'This used to be an evil torture chamber.
It's not here anymore but it was on this spot.' You know that when a tour is free and every German
walking by is mocking your guide it detracts from the horrific ambiance. After several jokes in
Jessica's ear about how scary the 'Puma` store she was trying not to ruin everyone´s
terrifying moment but couldnt stop laughing. So we did what any responsible American would do and
decided to sneak away from the tour with our new Kiwi friends and drink more beers. All in all...
a great evening.