Oktoberfest I

I forgot to chew with my mouth closed

To get from Stuttgart to Munich we used something called Mitfahrgelegenheit, which I think translates to “Ride Share”. Basically people who are traveling between cities and have extra space in their cars post an ad online and then people can call them and ask for a ride for a specified price. It is much cheaper and faster than either a train or a bus. We got a ride in a giant van with 6 people.

Once in Munich we needed to wait for Chris, the guy we are staying with in Munich, to get off of work so we spent some time walking around the city. Bavaria, where Munich is located, is famous for Oktoberfest and white sausages. We found a fancy looking restaurant across the street from where we had been dropped off so I could try some Bavarian beer and white sausages. I saw that the restaurant had USA Today in English and I went to get it, when I came back to the table I had been given an English menu and Yvonne had a German one, how smart are they!

There was a drunk Russian woman across the restaurant speaking very loudly in terrible English. She kept asking “what is this” and pointing at things, it was very entertaining. Bavarian white sausages are supposed to have the skin removed before eating and so Yvonne showed me how to do it and by the second sausage I had the technique down. The white sausages were pretty good.

We walked around the Munich town center and ended up at the Hofbrauhaus a restaurant/bar that is similar to Oktoberfest only they do it everyday. While looking for a table an elderly man dressed in traditional German attire invited us to sit at his table. The man was wearing a rabbit skinned cap dyed green along with a green velvet vest and a green jacket. Yvonne talked with this man in German for nearly two hours. He told Yvonne that in the last year and a half he had spent €40,000 at the Hofbrauhaus. The man then pulled a picture out of his wallet and showed it to us, it was him 30 years earlier in another traditional German outfit outside a nearby bar. Then he pulled out a second picture and I assumed this would be his wife or his grand children. However, it was a picture of a naked black man on the beach with a penis down to his ankles. The elderly man informed that it was not him in the second picture. I almost fell off my chair laughing. Some people at the other end of the table left, not because of the picture, and had a whole piece of uneaten bread. The elderly man asked me to give it to him and as I handed him the plate he slipped the piece of bread into his pocket for later.

Oktoberfest in Munich is pretty much the same as what we went to in Stuttgart, only a whole lot bigger. The tents are bigger, there are more tents, more rides and the price of beers are also bigger. There are also more people wearing traditional style clothing, especially girls with low cut “traditional” tops. Chris got off work at 6pm and then we all went to the Oktoberfest. By 6pm the tents were already very full and we had to walk around for a while until we found a table that had room for the three of us. As usual we drank many 1L beers and danced to American pop oldies and German drinking songs. It was again a whole lot of fun. I think I could do this everyday, but I’m not too sure how my liver would hold up to that.

After the tent we were in closed we went out to the fair grounds where the rides were still running. There was a place called The Devil’s Vortex and they don’t let you see what it is before you pay to enter. Once inside it is bleachers where people can sit or stand and in the middle is a giant disk that spins. The people in charge stop the disk and then call out either guys or girls and then there is a mad dash for the center of the disk. The disk is turned on and people fly off. The object is to be the last one on the spinning disk. After a couple of tries I ran and launched myself into the middle of the pile. As the disk started spinning others fell off but I was able to stay and was the last one there. I quickly pulled out my camera and took some photos of the people as I was spinning around. Then the people in charge drop a giant bean bag like thing from the ceiling and swing it around hitting me in the chest and head in an attempt to get me off the disk so they could start the next round. When that wasn’t successful they had two guys on the sides throw ropes in and try to pull me off. After a few attempts they finally locked their ropes around me and I came off the wheel.

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