September 22, 2007
Procession Of  Marquee Hosts And Breweries
Oktoberfest Parade And Oktoberfest Tapping Of 1st Keg

Photos Links, Videos  & Journals

It’s about 3:30 PM on Saturday afternoon and I’m back in my room for a little break.  I was up at 6:30 AM to do some work and check emails before heading out for the morning and the Procession of Marquee Hosts and Breweries Oktoberfest Parade.  It started at 10:45 AM and I wanted to scout places to take pictures.  I took the subway to the Karlsplatz stop and Stachus Fountain.  This was the suggestion of the concierge at the Sheraton.  I had checked out the spot I was told on the Eurotrip Forum and it was mostly in the shade so I wanted to find a place with good light.

 Before my search for a good spot I stopped at good old McDonalds for breakfast.  Unfortunately thought this was the slowest McDonald’s on the face of the earth.  I’ve noticed at home they actually have timers saying how fast each station is serving customers on average.  They definitely needed this technology at this McDonald’s.  I was 3^rd in line in my line and it took me almost 15 minutes to get my food.  There was a guy in front of the line next to me that actually was in front of the line the whole time I was there before leaving about 1 minute before I got my food.  Who knows how long he was there before I showed up.

I finished my Egg McMuffins German style, bacon instead of ham, fries and coke which cost me 10 Euros and went outside to look for a good spot.  It was about 9:30 AM and there weren’t as many people out as I expected.  Of course there was a reason for this that I will get to.  You did know it was Munich and Oktoberfest time because I already saw people walking around with bottles of beer. There were salesman out with Parade programs so I bought one and asked where a good spot.  He told me right were I was at the beginning of Sonnenstrasse at the Stachus Fountain.  There were stands here and the light was good coming around a corner so I staked out a spot.  More and more people started showing up but interestingly nobody was filling the stands up which cost about 24 Euros to purchase.  Both sides of the street started filling up and finally somebody came up and down the street to tell everyone they were on the route for tomorrow’s parade.  We need to walk down the block about 3 blocks to the real parade route.

 This really pissed me off.  I could have just slept in and showed up 10 minutes in advance and gotten the same spot I got to watch the parade.  It was a terrible spot also about 4 people back from the front (at least I can see over people) and the sun shining right at me, but I didn’t have time to find a better spot as the parade started about 3 minutes after I got to the correct route.  I even have the map the concierge gave me circling where I was originally that he and the program seller had told me to go.  I should go down and give him crap but I won’t. 

 The parade was short and sweet.  It took about 45 minutes and basically had the 6 breweries beer wagons, wagons from each beer tent and oompah bands along with carriages with the people that run the tents.  The beer tent wagons had waiters and waitresses on them all waving to the crowd. The crowd was huge by the way.  There were people 5-10 deep on each side of the street not including the stands that were full.  It’s a weird type of parade that beer wagons kept passing each other in front of us.  Specifically the Lowenbrau beer wagon had a breakdown of communication with their lead horse who decided to stop in front of my location.  At least two wagons passed them before the lead horse decide to start again. 

After the parade ended there was a line of mounted German police followed by the most important part of the parade there could be when you have a bunch of horses in a parade, the street cleaners.  I saw at least 3 of them following up to clean up the huge piles of horse crap that filled the street.  After the street sweepers passed the crowd filled in behind the parade and made their way down Schwanthalerstrasse towards Oktoberfest.  I met a couple from Washington State who were here for the first time.  I think they were impressed by my Oktoberfest knowledge. It’s basically just stuff I’ve read on the internet like 6 million people, 6 million liters of beer sold and that 30% of the six breweries inventories are sold each year during Oktoberfest.

 I got to the actual Oktoberfest grounds and realized it was going to be next to impossible to actually get a seat in a tent.  There were a few tents that already had lines and the Lowenbrau tent had a sign outside saying they were already closed.  My timing was actually pretty good at least for hearing the Tapping of the First Keg in the Schottenhamel Tent.  I was right outside of the tent as the mayor of Munich, Christian Ude, was tapping the  first keg of Oktoberfest.  I heard the huge roar of the crowd at noon exactly and they fired off about 10 single fireworks shots that must signal that the keg is tapped so the other tents know.  I heard the roars from those tents at that time and the music started up.  It was all pretty cool.

Oktoberfest 1st Keg Being Tapped In The Schottenhamel Tent By Munich Mayor Christian Ude Video

The Roaring Lowenbrau Lion Above The Entrance To The Lowenbrau Tent Video

 I spent the next couple of hours wandering around and taking a bunch of pictures of the horses and wagons along with the Bavaria statue that I’ve never really gotten a good photo of in my past 2 visits.  The weather is absolutely perfect right now, sunny and in the mid 70’s.  I looked in some side entrances to a few tents and they all had lines.  The crowd is absolutely massive.  I’ve never seen as many people on any other day I had been here.  I knew to expect this though. 

 I stopped at a few stands to get some lunch.  I had a weinerschnitzel sandwich at one stand and some calamari at another stand.  If you get a soda at any stand you have to pay a 1 Euro deposit and they give you a plastic chip that you have to return with the bottle to receive your deposit.

 About 2:00 PM my back started wearing out since I’ve been standing nonstop since almost 9:00 AM.  Since everything is packed I decided to head back and get some Motrin and rest some before heading back later.  I did make one stop at the Hauptbanhof (train station) to buy some large bottles of Diet Coke.  I remembered they were in the shop closest to the entrance  from my last trip, when I stayed at the  Intercity Hotel Munchen which is connected to the Hauptbanhof.  This is the only place I’ve found giant sodas in Munich.  Everywhere else you get small bottles for 2.50 Euro per bottle.  The train station has liter bottles for 2.34 Euros a bottle.  I bought 4 bottles to have in the room.  This should help my Double Gulp crack like addiction that I’ve been going through a bit of withdrawal symptoms since I arrived in Germany.

 I started back over to the Theresienwiese – Oktoberfest Grounds at about 6:15 PM.  It is nice to be the first stop of the subway because you know you will get a seat.  The Sheraton is at the Arabellapark stop which is on the U4 line which is a direct route to Oktoberfest.  It only takes about 15 minutes to get there.  

 It was still packed at 6:30 PM and all of the tents were closed to actually get inside.  You could still try to get seats in the outside beer garden area of the tents but those areas were packed also.  I walked around looking for seats but didn’t have any luck.  My biggest problem is I need an extra large seat and it’s also not easy for me to make my way to the middle or back end of a table without it being a real pain in the ass.  I almost got seats twice but just wasn’t quick enough.  At this point I decided to just get my picture taking out of the way, get something to eat and call it a night.  I had to move to the Marriott and still wanted to see the second parade tomorrow morning.  At least I know exactly where to go tomorrow since I was staked out tomorrows parade route incorrectly this morning. 

 I got myself a giant bratwurst and wandered around the grounds for awhile.  It was so packed it took almost an hour to make it from the Hippodrom Tent at one end of the grounds to the Lowenbrau Tent at the other end.  Being sober during the biggest drinking event on the face of the Earth did at least make some observations about the many different types of drunks.  I’m not casting stones, these are my people but there are definitely distinctive groups.

1. The drunk who loses all use of their legs.  There are two subsets in this category, the one that need their friends to help them walk and the ones that just fall down.

2. The drunk that has alcohol effect there vocal chords.  When these guys get drunk the only way of communicating is screaming at the top of their lungs when saying anything.

3. The drunk who has alcohol effect there eyelids.  There are two subsets here also: the ones who can’t see anymore and squint uncontrollably and the ones who look like they are Sleepy of the Seven Dwarfs.

4. The drunk that is looking for someone to just do anything to piss them off.  They just have that mean look that looks like they are looking for someone to just start something with them so they can finish it.

5. The drunk that doesn’t care what’s in there way.  They need to get somewhere and if you are in there way they are going to run into you.  They are the drunks that only have a north/south capability of walking.  There is no east/west possible to avoid running into someone.

6. The drunk that has the confused look on there face like they had just figured out a cure for cancer but now they have forgotten it.  These drunks usually are looking into space and sort of talking to themselves.

7. The drunk who thinks no matter what they say or do it is the funniest thing that has ever happened.  They are constantly laughing at themselves.

8. The drunk who everything has turned into a crisis.  Basically the drama queen drunk.  Every insignificant thing becomes a major crisis once they drink.

9. The drunk who doesn’t care about the consequences of anything they do.  This is the one type I have little use for.  For example, there is a drunk walking in this enormous crowd and sees a broken bottle and kicks it for no reason.  Since they are drunk they don’t really remember that the glass shard they are kicking could actually hurt somebody.

10. The "touchy feely" drunk.  They can’t pass by anybody without touching them.    It’s sort of like they are now blind and      need to touch things to figure out how  to get through the crowd by feel instead of sight.

11. The "look at me" drunk.  They do there best to be the center of everyone’s  attention.

12. The drunk who has way too much energy after drinking.  These can be funny at  times but also a pain in the butt like tonight in a huge crowd.  These hyper drunks need to run around no matter if there are 100,000 people around  them  or just one.  When there are 100,000 people like tonight there isn’t a lot room to be running around and they end up just annoying people.

13. The happy drunk, my personal favorite.

I’m sure I’m missing some categories and may come back and update my list but this night was like a sociology experiment.  I started thinking about this on the subway on the way home when I types 1, 2, 7 and 11 around me.  On the funny side of the trip there were two guys who fell asleep on each others shoulders.  Everyone, including myself, thought it was a cute picture.  Flash bulbs were going off left and right, people were laughing uncontrollably and they were putting themselves in the photos with these guys and they never budged until we go to the Arabellapark stop which Is the last.  Somebody was nice enough to wake them up but who knows where their real stop was.

 Tomorrow is another long day and I haven’t figured out exactly how to go about checking out and checking in with trying to see the parade and actually get in a tent but I’m sure it will come to me.     

Return To September 21, 2007
St. Peter's Church, Viktualienmarkt, Marienplatz &
TSV 1860 Munchen vs. FC St. Pauli Soccer Game at Allianz Arena
 

Forward To September 23, 2007
Oktoberfest Grand Procession
Advertising & Main Parade