The group of about 200 international students met at 9:45 PM at the Meidling Bahnhof on Thursday, and by 11ish we were on our train. We had sleeping compartments with bunks, and 6 or so people to each compartment. The people in mine were from the States, Canada, Italy, Mexico, and the Netherlands. And we were basically tight after a round of introductions.
The trip from Vienna to Munich should only take 4 or 5 hours, but Erasmus plans it so that the trip takes all night with our train letting every other train pass us by. The tickets are also cheaper, but it's mostly so that people could party all night long and get to know each other. There were more than a few students who arrived at Oktoberfest and had no desire to even look at a beer, which is pretty unfortunate. I myself only got 2 or 3 hours of sleep, but after a relaxing morning sightseeing around Munich, I was ready for more action.
Did I mention that I was wearing my dirndl? It made me pretty popular on the train, and with the group once we were sitting at our tables in the balcony of the Löwnbräu tent. I'm definitely in a lot of random Spanish and Portugese students' facebook pictures. Too bad I'm American, not authentic Bavarian...
So a beer tent at Oktoberfest is a huge tent crazily decorated with the theme of that tent and full of people drinking, noise, and music from the bandstand. Every 5 minutes they would start up "Prosi, a prosi" and everyone would stand on the tables and drink. My favorite non-prosi song was their rendition of Amazing Grace. Three trumpet players came up to my balcony to play it, and I was one of the first enthusiastic people to stand on my bench and belt it out. The video will either be on the blog or fb soon, check it out. It was simply wonderful.
Tip: In case you're planning a trip to Oktoberfest, you should know that in the beer tent the only beverage on sale is in fact beer. Seriously. We saw girls try to ask for water and get completely shut down.
Once our table reservation was up, we spent the remainder of the day walking around the festival. We rode on the ferris wheel (Riesenrad) and got an incredible view of the city, and then I teamed up with Thomas, from Canada, to get pictures with men in Lederhosen. I had assumed I would take pictures with such wonderfully-clad men in our beer tent, but there were none sitting near us on the balcony. So I put on my sweetest smile and asked in my most polite German whether it would be ok if we took a picture, because I was heartbroken that none of my friends had worn Lederhosen. My only regret is missing the very first pair of old men I spotted because I hesitated. We were never able to find a pair of old men like them the rest of the night. Definitely not a coincidence.
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| I couldn't resist the hat and coat, a complete ensemble. |
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