Oktoberfest is the world's biggest beer festival which takes place every year in Munich, Germany. It usually last for two and a half week (16-18 days) from mid or late September to the first weekend of October.
This year Oktoberfest began on Saturday, 16 September 2017 and ends on Tuesday, 3 October 2017.
This year i got a chance to finally be there. As i live in Amsterdam, Netherlands, so me and my friends planned to go to Oktoberfest. We hired a rental car from Amsterdam and planned to drive all the way to Munich, Germany.
On friday afternoon, we started from Amsterdam around 4 pm and it was a long road trip of 830 kms (not a very wise decision) at this point of time, as the most of the highways on our way in germany are under maintenance and that caused a lot of delay as compared to the estimated time. We took Germany for granted (world famous for its no speed limit highways) and presumed that we will make it before time. We reached Munich around 1 am in the night and were tired as we directly left from our office. Our AirBnB host was really nice and patiently waited for us and welcomed us very warmly. We went off to sleep as we knew it's gonna be a long day tomorrow.
We started early in the morning around 7:30 am and took the metro to Oktoberfest venue and reached there in 20 mins. It was a rainy day, there were people already queued up to celebrate the festival's opening day.
Gates were opened at 9 am and everyone started running towards the big tents to get a table. We followed the crowd and landed up in Löwenbräu (Lion's Brew) Tent. Now we had some really good food for breakfast and had to kill time till 12 noon. Festival starts everyday at 12 noon and ends at 11 pm in the night. (11 f*cking hours of pure entertainment)
People getting ready for the party:
After the parade of the restaurateurs on carriages from downtown to the festival grounds, at exactly 12:00 clock the lord mayor opens the first beer barrel in the Schottenhammel tent. With the initial pass and the exclamation "O'zapft is!" ("It's tapped!") the Oktoberfest is declared as opened.
Twelve gunshots are then fired on the stairway of Ruhmeshalle. This is the signal for the other restaurateurs to start with the serving of beer. Traditionally, the Bavarian Minister-President is served the first liter of beer. Then in the other tents, the first barrels are tapped and beer is served to the visitors.
and the bands arrives in our tent:
Video:
and there comes our first beer mugs on the table.
Prost!!
and we go on and on and on...
Around 4 pm we planned to start tent hopping, but rather saw the rides as soon as we moved out of the tent and started enjoying the fun rides.
What else do you expect from drunk people :P
After enjoying a couple of rides, we started tent hopping but those were kind of unlucky attempts, as there were huge queues of people trying to go in but have the tents were so packed that the guards had to make people wait till some of the people leave the tent.
We managed to enter 2-3 tents but couldn't get any place to sit and finally landed back to our first tent, where we already made some new cool friends in the morning and managed to squeeze some place on the table. We didn't waste our time any further and started gulping beer and dancing with all cool people in our tent.
There are some awesome hats and props available in the tents, which you can buy. One of the best I found:
At 11 pm, when the festival ended, we started heading back:
Overall, I had an amazing time in Munich, attending Oktoberfest and this was my first time to Germany, looking forward to explore more culture and places in Germany. I gulped in some 6-7 litres of beer in that single day and did party with some of the coolest people from across the world. You will find a lot of people travelling from US, Australia, New Zealand and Europe (obviously) to attend the biggest beer festival in the world and it's totally worth it.
I am creating this blog, so that I can share my story with you and may be this post will also motivate you more to go and attend this festival. There is still a lot of time left as the festival ends on Tuesday, 3 October 2017. If you are in Europe and you love beer, I would say this is a must go place.
P.S. If possible try to dress up in traditional attire: Lederhose (for guys) and Dirndl Dresses (for girls).
Thanks for taking out your time to read my post, hope you liked my story. I would request you to share your feedback / suggestions and upvote + resteem if you enjoyed my post.
Regards,
Abhinav Badola