Oktoberfest: Munich, Germany: Let's Get Loud.

A couple of weeks ago my sister and I met in Munich to begin our German-Prague adventure. We arrived in Munich the day after Oktoberfest started. I had only been in Munich less than an hour and everywhere I looked I saw pretzels and people everywhere wearing their traditional Bavarian garb (Dirndl's and Lederhosen.) Unfortunately, Dirndl's are a bit pricey (some range around 400 euros) especially in Munich, otherwise I would have bought one to wear in a heartbeat.

My sister and I started the morning off right, showing up at our friend Ralf's apartment to find him and his friends eating a traditional Bavarian breakfast: white sausages, a basket full of pretzels, and of course, bier. I couldn't have asked for a better first impression of Munich/Germany and we hadn't even made it to Oktoberfest yet!

Munich's Oktoberfest this year had about 6.5 M visitors (if my math is correct, I think that is close to about 11 times the population of Portland, OR!) needless to say it was quite a site. Even though I was jet-lagged, I was determined to eat my giant pretzel and drink my liter of Oktoberfest beer. Some of the tents hold about 10,000 people (some less) and it was absolutely nuts! Everyone is drinking, dancing on tables, eating copious amount of German food, laughing and just simply enjoying life. This goes on everyday until about 11:00 P.M. - then there are after parties at some other Biergartens on the same grounds as Oktoberfest (we got a chance to check those out too!)

I think one of my favorite moments was being in one of the Oktoberfest tents drinking a beer with my sister and dancing with everyone in the tent to J-Lo's song: Let's Get Loud. It was simply fabulous, and that song is quite popular.

Fortunately I think we ate enough giant pretzels to keep the beer from affecting us...too much. 

Stay tuned for some more posts about all of my German pretzels!