Munich

Munich

September 1992

On Tuesday, September 29th, the four adults took the ICE bullet train from Stuttgart to Munich to go to the OktoberFest, the grand-daddy beer blast of them all! It was a cold drizzly day, so the crowds were not as much of a problem as we had feared. I hd heard that on a good day there might be 750,000 people at the fest at one time!! First we tried the Paulaner tent, drank giant mugs of beer and listened to Bavarian music. Then we strolled the midway for a while, then we tried the Löwenbräu tent (more beer, more music).. Then we strolled some more, and hit the Spaten München tent. We spent the whole day at the fest, roving and sampling. About 9:30 PM we headed back to the München HBF (luckily a short walk from the fest grounds) to take another train back to Stuttgart. We arrived home around 1:00 AM. The kids had gone to friends' houses after school that day so they were well-taken-care-of.

Dave, Joney, and Lynn in Front Of the Hof Braü Wagon
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Joney Dave and Gene in a Fest Tent
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The Paulaner Tent at Oktoberfest
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October 1994

In early October I got to spend a day in Munich hunting down beer halls and playing at the real Oktoberfest. I organized a one-day trip via train (group discounts are great!), so four of us from work headed off early on the last Saturday of the Oktoberfest. We walked around the city center for a while, visiting the permanent beer halls, and then we walked over to the Theresien-Weise, where the fest is held every year. It was unbelievably crowded, but we had fun anyway. Of course we also visited our local Stuttgart fest (the 2nd biggest one in the world) a few times during its 2-week run, too! We're experts at dancing on benches, now!

Oktoberfest - October 1999

I had to go to Brussels and Stuttgart on business in September-October 1999, which was like an old-home-week for me. I visited old friends and neighbors, had dinners in old favorite restaurants, drank lots of good German beer, and got to spend an afternoon at the Oktoberfest in München with a bunch of friends from the office! Eight of us took some time off from work and rode the train from Stuttgart to München on Thursday (30 September). Even though it was the middle of the week and in the early afternoon and it was pouring rain (we got soaked), the place was jam-packed with people - wall-to-wall. It was dangerous walking around - there were so many umbrellas it would have been easy to have your eye poked out by one of the corners!

Click on any thumbnail to see a larger copy (all are approximately 35-55 kb JPEG files, except for the wide one which is 122 kb)

This is a panorama view of the Paulaner tent at the München Oktoberfest. Each tent holds about 10,000 people, and they were all (about ten tents) filled to capacity. Some of the tents even closed their doors to any more people because they were too full!	Here are three MITRE guys (there were five but two got separated from us) toasting to our own good health! *Prosit!* We couldn't find a place to sit in any of the tents (especially for eight people together), so we stood by this railing in the Hofbraü tent the whole time. The glass mugs hold a liter of beer - its called a *Mass*. A mass of festbier cost 11.50DM (about $6.40).	We bought some radishes from the Pickle Fraü, so she consented to have her picture taken. There were roaming pickle and radish fraü's, and bretzeln fraü's, and schnappes fraü's, and cigarette fraü's, and medallion fraü's, and hat fraü's, and balloon fraü's, and lotto fraü's, and..........
Here I am (looking a bit like a drowned rat) with Elsie, our Bier Fraü. She wasn't supposed to sell us beer if we weren't sitting down, but she had pity on us (and we tipped well!), so she and a few other bier fraü's brought us beer when we needed them.	Some University of Texas students joined us for a beer or three.......	Another Bier Fraü showing her muscles - she's got five liters of beer in each hand!!!
These have got to be the weirdest hats ever made. I was only borrowing mine for the photo, but the other guy actually bought his. Definitely a unique souvenir.	Here's three of the group with two of the Bier Fraü's.....	Here we are in the train station after a happy day at the fest!