The next place I visited after Barcelona was Munich for Oktoberfest for the first weekend in October.
We left Paris at 11pm on Thursday evening on a bus full of people ready to drink excessive amount of beer for three days. My plan was to not drink any beer being offered on the bus because…well…I need to sleep. However, this was not the plan of many others, and it quite literally turned into a ‘party bus’.
We arrived in Munich at 10am the next day and it was sunny and lovely and we were all exhausted, needing a shower and a nap. Of course we could not check in until 3pm so we had to postpone those needs for a couple of hours. We decided to use the time to roam around Munich and explore the city. This started with some traditional Bavarian food and drink. After the nourishment, we walked around and saw some amazing things. It is an incredibly beautiful city; one I would not hesitate to not only visit again but could easily live in. It is not too big, has an amazing transport system, is clean, organised and yet full of history. Contrary to what I had been told, the people were incredibly nice to us and very helpful.
The next day was Oktoberfest day. We arrived at 7:30am because we decided we wanted to get into the Hakker Tent, which is a very popular tent in Germany. How it works is that you do not pay anything to get in; it is totally open to the public, but you have to be seated at a table to get served a beer and you cannot easily reserve a table. Hence the getting there at 7:30am. We did get a table which was excellent and we drank a lot. Now, when someone explained Oktoberfest to me, I was like-um, you sit around and drink beer all day, well that’s lame. But no, it is so much more than that. It is 2000 people all dressed up in traditional Bavarian costumes, standing on tables and singing songs in German, drinking litres of beer and eating some of the best chicken and pretzels I have ever had! There are literally no words to describe this event and I really think that everyone should go at least once in their lives! Some make it a habit, like the man we met who was at his 22nd Oktoberfest. There are people from all over the world, but actually there are also a lot of Germans there.
Once you leave the tent, it is pretty hard to get back inside. But outside the tents there are rides and food and souvenirs etc. I guess it is like a music festival but the tents are for drinking beer and not for music.
We left around 7pm and fell into a deep beer-induced sleep! The next day, some decided to visit Oktoberfest again but we instead went to the English Garden which was amazing. A huge park in the middle of a city, with a pond and ducks et alles! It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
We then spent another 12 hours on the bus, which again turned into a party bus. Some people just have a lot more stamina than I do. We arrived back in Paris at 6am, and luckily for me, my Monday classes had been cancelled!
I cannot say I saw the whole of Munich but I saw enough to know that it is beautiful and an amazing city! Definitely worth a 12 hour bus ride!
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