Oktoberfest 2013

Oktoberfest 2013: Munich, October 2^nd

It was my first time at the real Bavarian Oktoberfest. I was naive, innocent, and completely unaware of what was in store. No party or festival or celebration of any kind compares to the WILDness that is Oktoberfest.

My dear old friend from Regensburg invited me to come and visit for a few days with the promise of a trip to the fest (known as Wies’n by all Bavarians). I immediately said yes and took a 6 hour train ride south back to Bayern, where I studied and therefore feel completely at ease. The night before our scheduled adventure it came to my friend’s mind that I had no dirndl to wear (traditional dress worn by women in Bavaria). Her mother was so kind as to lend me hers! It was too big and too long, but I didn’t care because I got to dress up like everyone else. To try and remedy the size problem I wore two bras, but my boobs still weren’t big enough.

Carrying minimal equipment apart from money, ID, and a camera, we headed to the station. People had been drinking since 10 or 11 in the morning already, but early afternoon drunkenness and debauchery are no foreigners at Oktoberfest. We had about an hour to kill before meeting up with my friends friends, so we decided to walk around and check things out. We wanted to see the old Oktoberfest, which is gated off and you can’t just walk freely in like in the more modern part, but rather must wait for the number inside to die down. Unfortanely, as we learned over mega-phone, there was an hour and a half wait to get in, so we decided to ride the giant swing ride instead. It is probably one of the least concerning rides at any fair and thus our reasoning. Before getting on the ride a sign reads “no drunken visitors may ride” and for good reason. I almost vommed and I was completely sober. It was a pretty funny site: there are all the nice polite Germans on the swing, chatting and sitting quietly, and there is Lucy… “HOLY SHIT! MOTHERFUCKER! JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR! SWEET MOTHER! AHHHHHHHH!” Needless to say the German man in front of me thought it was quite funny and felt it necessary to say “It’s not so bad”. Getting off the ride I was completely dizzy and had to hold on to my friend for support. I am not one for such forms of entertainment, but it was still a blast.

We finally met with the three other girls also clad in dirndls and went in search of a beer tent to set of camp. Luckily, my friend has connections and was able to get us some seats on a couple benches at a table in the Augustiner (famous Bavarian brewery) tent, which would definitely have been impossible otherwise. The funny part of this whole escapade was that the people we sat with were all over sixty. The two of us sat between two old men who were very friendly, but completely wasted. One of them kept trying to talk to me, but the fact that he was speaking Bayerisch (the dialect in Bavaria), was slurring his speech, and that the noise level in the tent was so high made communication utterly impossible. That was okay though, we were all just laughing, enjoying the company, and drinking our giant liters of beer anyway.

It was a spectacular night. I have never drunk so much in my life, nor will I hopefully ever again. I laughed, I sang, and I celebrated beer and community with some wonderful Germans. Although it was definitely in the top best experiences of my life thus far, I can easily say that I will only ever do it once. You can have too much of a good thing.