Festival Musings: Munich Oktoberfest

Being an Australian, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect at the Munich Oktoberfest. I had been raised on a diet of war movies, so I guess some form of concentration camp scene - where we were force fed beer – was on the cards. The reality was completely different. We caught the train from Frankfurt to Munich, and on the train was an astonishing amount of beautiful women in Bavarian costumes. One particular group got on at an intervening station and began drinking some form of cheap wine, even though they were obviously under eighteen. When we expressed our astonishment that one of them allowed an elderly gentleman to take a photo of her underwear, we became somewhat of a sensation in the carriage due to our accents. Then came the drinking age explanation and we were offered some of their awful wine, which we readily accepted.

We ended up going straight to the festival, having been assured there were no places to stay, and found a seat in one of the many beer halls. We drank enough that first night we didn’t really mind sleeping on the floor of the locker room in the train station, although there was a fairly strong smell of urine.

We were woken by relatively polite police officers, who were also waking the hundred or so others that were littered around the station. Outside the station I was able to purchase from the hot dog vendor both a beer and a currywurst at about six in the morning. Devouring the hot dog, while trying to avoid the curry powder, and taking swills of beer to mitigate the curry, we made our way back to the festival. We lined up just in front of a group of American military police, and began to talk to them after one said to the girl in front of him “You touched my cock, I guess I’d better ask you your name.”

After lining up for about an hour we got into the hall and were able to order. Breakfast was half a chicken, and a stein – a litre of beer. We were on a kind of upper level, looking down on the vast hall, when down in the crowd a large man stood on a table, held up his stein in salute, then downed it in less than five seconds. We were all impressed and clapped heartily. Then another in the crowd
tried it, and was also applauded, which prompted the original guy to do it again, to thunderous applause. When a girl in the crowd got up and made an attempt, she was also applauded, even though she didn’t manage to finish. Then the original guy stood up for his third time, toasted the hall and downed his stein to universal acclimation. We were in the presence of pure greatness, and felt humbled. We made our way to another hall later that day, which was predominantly filled with actual Germans. We were doing well until I went to find an auto teller and got lost. We also slept in the locker room again that night. The next day we decided to arrange a meeting place in case of a repeat of the previous night, and found a statue we had managed to miss that was probably five stories high.

Unfortunately, we were also on the last day of the festival, and I somehow managed to get a cut on my forehead that partially explains why I can remember nothing of that final day. Or maybe it’s because we were going to Amsterdam next, but that’s another story.

Sandy

New Music Film Comedy blog

Hey all,
As well as the technical blog we've been running for a while at blog.gravityfour.com today we're starting this blog to focus on stuff related to festivals and what's going on with Music Film Comedy. We're launching this week and doing recommendations for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

We're adding more festivals and act data each day. We also going to be improving our recommendation system as we get more feedback from people and gather more data. In the next few days we'll release a feature which gives you a schedule, based on your preferences of what to see at a music festival. It'll even work for multi-day festivals as Byron Bay Bluesfest is our first target. If anyone wants to submit details / lineups / times for a festival we haven't got listed or give feedback on the site we'd love to hear.

I'm very excited to announce that our festival correspondent and critic, Sandy, will be writing an article each week about he's extensive festival going experiences.

Loki