Big Adventures, Little World

Me and Dung with our steins of beer.

Now some people would argue that Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth, but they are in actual fact, wrong. The real happiest place on Earth is actually Oktoberfest, and here is why. Number 1: Beer. How can anyone argue with that? I guess if you don’t like beer then you might, but if you don’t then you probably shouldn’t be at a beer festival either (although there is a lot more than just beer to it). Like Number 2: The people. Everyone is your friend! It doesn’t matter who they are, where they come from, you can sit down with anyone and everyone and be singing and dancing on tables with them within half an hour. Number 3: The food. If there is one thing the German’s do well, it’s the food. The pork belly and pork knuckles, and the different types of sausages and then of course there is the chicken. I have no idea what they do to it but somehow they manage to cook thousands of chickens daily and all to perfection. They are just oh so juicy and the taste is delicious. I think it has something to do with the seasoning and the cooking, but can never be sure. Or maybe it is just down to the fact that you have a few litres of beer in you, but probably not seeing as it is all just as good everywhere else and without the litres and litres of beer. Other than that though, do you really need any more reasons to dub a place the happiest on Earth? I think not.

Saturday it was back to the beer halls to make some new friends and drink and eat our weights in beer and food once again. Kate and Cliff headed out to Dachau, one of the concentration camps during WWII while the rest of us went back to the Oktoberfest. Being a Saturday the place was packed with people everywhere. After walking in and out of the different beer halls, (well at least their beer gardens) we finally found some nice Germans in the Augustiner beer garden who shared their table with us. They were very nice and spoke enough English to speak to as well. The beers started coming and then before we knew it we were a couple of beers down and getting hungry, so what else to do but order some chickens, and of course, more beer. The day went on and soon Kate and Cliff had come to join us, as well as Nick, Soph and Matt, so of course more and more beers were coming out. Later in the afternoon our new German friends who had been there since opening had decided it was time to call it a day, and so we had some more new people join us at the table.

Elese devouring the chicken while I drink my beer.

Day eventually turned to night and we thought that a bit of a wander through the grounds and some more food was in order before we had to get the bus back to camp. We also decided that we needed to acquire some souvenirs in the form of the steins, and we managed to have a lot of them before Cliff lost them all to a crazy lady who worked there. He just didn’t have the knack for stealing, I mean, acquiring steins. We all managed to get some more though, and then Cliff and I headed for the bus, where he then lost his 2 steins to one of the tour leaders saying he couldn’t take them on the bus with him, though I managed to take mine on there with no problems. (Luckily Cliff ended up getting them back the next morning). We caught the last bus back and met the others at the campsite, after much waiting, as they had got a taxi back, and bought sausages too for one final bite to eat before we all crashed out in our tents to prepare for another day. Though maybe not at the beer halls this time.