Munich, Germany

Saturday 26th September 2015:

On Saturday, we made our way out to Heathrow Airport for the first time since our arrival almost 7 months ago. We'd booked our Oktoberfest weekend through Topdeck, however went for an option where we had to get our own way to and from Munich.

Having flown many a budget airline, we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of service offered by our carrier, Swiss. Attentive and friendly cabin crew, comfortable leather seats, ample leg room and good food including complimentary Swiss chocolates.

We landed at Munich Airport and headed to the train. As it turns out there are 2 routes between the city and the airport. One of them is a fairly direct path into the city centre (S8), while the other moseyed through the countryside before looping back around to the city (S1). Unluckily for us, we didn't learn about the S8 until we were already aboard the S1.

We arrived at the camp site, Campingplatz München Thalkirchen, around 4pm. Camping, because we were too late (and too poor...) to be able to get a hotel or even hostel accommodation. Fortunately the tents were already set up for us, so all we had to do was drop our bags off and hunt out some food.

The Germans are producers of some great beers and certainly enjoy a drink. Subsequently, they also enjoy a decent feed. Large meal servings generally consist of big hunks of meat, pork and duck being some of their favourites, plus carb-loaded potato dumplings. And as we'd already discovered in Berlin, it's delicious.

Through the woods we wandered until we reached a hotel, Gasthof Hinterbrühl, and got stuck into some roast pork and a Vienna schnitzel (veal). As lame as it was, by around 7:30pm we were wrecked yet we hadn't even been to the beer tents, so we retired to the tent for an early night.

We woke on Sunday before 7am, and kitted up with our Lederhosen and Dirndl to catch the 7:30am shuttle bus to the beer tents. We were sort of expecting standard event marquees, but these temporary "tents" are much bigger and more permanent looking structures. It seemed ludicrous to be lined up with a hoard of other people for beer before 9:00 on a Sunday morning, particularly when you think that there are 16 "big tents" and numerous more "small tents". Surely you could just drop in whenever throughout the day?

We'd been advised however that the early start was necessary, because the beer wenches won't serve you unless you are at a table, and in previous years some tents have reached capacity and stopped allowing entry by 11:30am. Fortunately we struck up conversation with another group in the queue and we made an alliance that once the doors opened, we would marathon sprint for a table together. By 9:30am we were getting stuck into our first beers (Radler for Roslyn - half beer, half lemonade).

Oktoberfest is more than just a festival of beer, dating back to 1810 when it started as a celebration to honour the wedding of Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. Over time, the celebrations have moved forwards to September due to the better weather. It has since grown to become the world’s largest fair, with plenty of food stalls and carnival rides in addition to the beer tents. Statistics from the Oktoberfest website say that over the course of Oktoberfest 2015, there were 5.9 million visitors who consumed 7.7 million litres of beer.

We spent a number of hours in what is probably the most well-known tent, Hofbräu Festzel, counterpart to the famous Hofbräuhaus which is open in Munich year round. This tent holds around 10,000 people, and had become very busy by the time we eventually left.

It seemed to be occupied by a significant number of Aussie's and Kiwi's, and got pretty messy pretty quickly. Early on, the first few blokes of the day stood up on tables and downed their 1 litre steins to cheers from the crowd, and after a while a few girls had a turn as well. A few more beers in, and most of the people that stood up to scull were merely pouring the beer down their faces, clothing and onto the tables and floor below. This escalated to girls standing on tables sans-beer and making out with each other. By this point, the tent was occupied by plenty of liquored up bogans and they loved these table top performances. The security guards were less convinced, and it reached a point where anyone that stood on a table was promptly removed.

Since we really only had the one day, we decided to make a move and headed outside to check out the rest of the fair. Bypassing through the Löwenbräu tent, we returned to the camp site to change out of our costumes before returning to Marienplatz, the central square of the city. The impressive New City Hall dominates the skyline with its bold gothic architecture, and tall tower housing the Rathaus-Glockenspiel. It chimes and figurines re-enact stories from Munich’s history each day at 11am, 12pm and 5pm.

We noticed that Duloc, the animated kingdom of Lord Farquaad from Shrek, has a resemblance to Munich. From a distance, some of them look like they aren't even real and other like they are built out of Lego. We aren't sure whether that is just coincidental or if the producers of Shrek based it on the city. Unfortunately as we were without a guide and only had limited time, we were unable to learn the historical significance of much else. 

We ended the day with a Bavarian feast at a nearby restaurant, roast duck, 2 different kinds of roast pork plus dumplings. We were unable to finish and subsequently the waitress made us feel like we were weak and inferior.

Once again we were back at the tent and asleep fairly early. Real party people we are. We awoke the next morning (Monday), packed our things and transited back to Marienplatz for a wander around the markets, before returning to the airport.

Highlights: 

- Stopover in Geneva, Switzerland

- Camping at Campingplatz München Thalkirchen
- Strolled through the woods
- Oktoberfest, contributed to 7.7 million litres of beer being consumed
- Hofbräu Festzelt, counterpart to the world famous Hofbräuhaus
- Passed through of Löwenbräu tent
- Marienplatz, similarities to Lord Farquad’s kingdom from Shrek
- New City Hall with Rathaus-Glockenspiel
- Peterskirche (St Peter’s Church) and Petersplatz (St Peter’s Square)
- Ate pork knuckle, roast duck, Vienna schnitzel, wursts and potato dumplings