October 6, 2010

Our Only Oktoberfest Visit This Year

Many of you will remember our Oktoberfest shenanigans last year (Greg's version and my version). This year it was much more calm - we went together with my second cousin who was visiting from Israel on the U-bahn. We didn't get lost, but did get pushed around a bit by the drunks walking around on the Oktoberfest grounds. I hear it's quite fun to have a table reserved and to see all the insides of the tents during the weekdays when it's quieter, but this year that didn't pan out for us.

It was a special year for Oktoberfest, too - 200 years in existence! There's definitely advantages and disadvantages to the festival - on one side, you get hoards of tourists mostly interested in just drinking to oblivion and not caring about what they do to the city; on the other hand, beautiful dirndls abound and the lederhosen the guys wear always makes me chuckle. The locals tend to be happier and more social during this time - I wish there was more of that year round in fact!

I even got to go salsa dancing with the dirndl- and lederhosen-attired crowd last week. It was just like a country ball with contradictory music.

In any case, I'm sure the city of Munich makes a pretty penny from the tourists that come here, part of which I know will go into restoring the city back to its state of cleanliness before the tourists arrived.

No comments:

Post a Comment