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Oktoberfest Opening '06

Wow! Where to start…I’ve just made it home (all the way back to Oz) after one of the best days of my life.

Yes I’m talking about the opening of Oktoberfest ’06! It was my first time at such an event and it has certainly left an impression. Having been travelling solo the month prior, I decided it was best to join a group for something so big as I had no idea what to expect. Fanatics won my search as a group to join and I had the most amazing time. I can’t possibly put into words the atmosphere of our group. Everyone was in for possibly one of their biggest days yet!

It all started with a very early wake-up, a wait in line for the showers, everyone getting decked out in their yellow shirts, a bit of breaky (which turned out to be all I ate the entire day), then off to the tram to the Oktoberfest grounds. Some crazy Germans singing a song about clapping entertained us during the trip then came the wait out the front of the most famous Hofbrau Festzelt!

Before you know it we’re all rushing like mad men trying to get a table…what followed was possibly the longest wait in my entire life til the mayor tapped the first keg. You can’t even start to imagine the cheering that followed. Next was drinking, standing of chairs, drinking, waving arms in the air, drinking, singing even though you have no idea what the words are (I somehow managed to make up my own English words to the songs…and they were in German!), drinking…yeah there was a lot of drinking. The barmaids were simply awesome! Worth every tip they got, which I’m sure by the end of the night would have made a pretty good pay packet.

You know when you have a night out it takes a while til you’re at that perfect drunk stage, then before you know it you’re either sobering up or more commonly too drunk and unable to participate in anything other than the constant bathroom trips??? Well somehow I managed to be at that perfect drunk stage for almost 14hrs!!! I’m not kidding! It was great.

I met so many great people in our tour group as well as many others who were more than happy to sing and dance and drink with an Aussie chick! I had no idea I’d even make it to the end of the night but before you knew it the beer stopped flowing and the entertainment was over but no, the story does not end there…I ended up at another bar for some good old yager bombs. To cut the story short I woke up at 5am in a hammock in terrible pain- my legs were bruised and swollen from falling off the chairs a number of times I’d rather forget, my hand also swollen from holding those steins in the air for pretty much the entire day, my sunglasses were literally in two, I no longer had a camera, I no longer had a jacket and I also was not alone in that hammock…

Yes my camera and all those awesome Oktoberfest photo’s gone! Shattered- think I’ll have to make it back next year to recapture it all again! Oh and one last note to everyone who I met that first day and did not see again…I did make it back to the festival the next day but after not even a quarter of my stein I was quite ill, and continued to be ill til 5pm. I wasn’t able to eat anything from breakfast Saturday til breakfast Monday so please don’t think I was being unsociable.

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that I had the best time at the opening of Oktoberfest and I’m seriously thinking of coming back to do it all again next year.
Thu 21/09/2006 Katie Hogg 909 views

4 Comments about this article

  • Great write-up, totally awesome weekend!
    My only intrigue is who did you wake up in the hammock with???
    Anyone out there got any clues, or perhaps photo evidence?

    Posted by David Mcclatchey Fri Sep 22, 2006 02:52am AEST
  • I went in 2004 & had the time of my life. Went out this year in Aus to a German bar but it didnt come close.

    Posted by James Ashton Mon Oct 23, 2006 07:17pm AEST
  • If that wasn't the best and messiest 10 days of my life I don't what is!!!!

    PS: Im still recovering 2 months later!!

    Posted by Gareth Long Sat Nov 11, 2006 03:07am AEST
  • thats awesome. i'm just planning my oktoberfest trip now (im playing a season of rugby league in france from oct 07 til may 08 so hitting oktoberfest on the way there!) and this website showed up on google. might be with a couple of mates, but from my experience the bigger the crew the better. theres no where to write anything up on the forum so let me know what the deal is. im so keen to scull some steins!

    Posted by Andrew Le breton Mon Jan 22, 2007 07:53pm AEST

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