Oktoberfest

I got to cross an item off my bucket list this weekend when I attended the opening day of Oktoberfest in Munich.  After driving down Friday night, we had a hearty German meal, followed by some pretzels and schnapps shots in the hotel room.  On Saturday morning, we started off nice and early - leaving the hotel around 815 in the morning.

We got the fairgrounds and the beer tents around 9 in the morning so that we could get a table for the noon tapping of the kegs.  This is what we found...at NINE in the morning...three hours before they could serve beer.

Over 2,000 people already packed into the beer tent.  We had to settle for two tables outside in the beer garden.  Normally, I'd be happy to be outside, but the weather forecast called for scattered rain all day.  And rain it did.  We passed the hours by chatting and playing some iphone games.  After seeing all the experienced Oktoberfest goers playing cards, I found a deck at one of the gift shops.  We passed the time by playing the game "bullshit."  It wasn't until later that we discovered the German deck we were playing with only contained cards 6 and above.  None of us had actually realized this while playing.  This is while we were sober.

During our three hour wait, it rained off and on and we bought umbrellas and ponchos to stay moderately dry.  At noon, cannons announced the start of the fest and the began serving beer...and we waited.  It took us an additional 45 minutes or so to finally get our first beer.

The beer was delicious.  Served in a glorious Maß, which is German for "measure", which means that they measure beer in liters. Round one went down fairly quickly and we had lunch with round two.  The sun came out and the beer garden cheered.  It really was spectacular and made the wait worthwhile. 

Prost!

That's 7 full liters of beer!