We just recovered from 2 crazy nights in Munich where we celebrated the 200th Anniversary of Oktoberfest, consumed copious amounts of German beer and generally received no sleep. In the end, it was entirely worth it. We arrived on Munich on Friday around 3pm and proceeded to take a quick tour of the downtown square before meeting our (new) host at 6pm. We have been extremely fortunate so far to have been bunking for free with various friends. After settling in to our quarters (4 people in the small living room) we went out on the town to celebrate. Now, our original plan was to get sleep and be at the tents at 7 the next morning. Unforunately, the night went late (4:30am) and our strategy changed hourly. We now had the plan to continue on and set a deadline of arriving the next morning at 10:30am. The Michael Jackson reference you ask? It turns out that our host (Carsten) has two good friends who might be the most avid fans of Michael Jackson on the planet. Robust collectors, they own hundreds and hundreds of records, bootlegs, vinyl and various other items. Jessie had been doing an impersonation of a chicken on and off for the night, and they would not let us back in to the apartment until she imitated it one more time. Jessie refused, and one of the Germans said, ‘Do the Michael Jackson chicken!’ A long story short, we got in, caught 4 hours of sleep and hastily prepared for another day of adventure.

We arrrived somewhat clost to our deadline and made a beeline to the tent with the least amount of line-up. This turner out to be Paulaner, and we were inside in 1 minute. The only problem; every seat seemed to be taken. We were warned about this, and we got creative (or rather Carsten did) by asking many tables if they could squeeze in 4 more. In a complete stroke of luck we found a table with 8 generous people (6 German, 2 American) fluent in English and well-educated! The day started slow as the previous night was taking it’s toll, but once the ceremonial Keg rolled out to a parade, we knew it was going to be amazing! We ordered our first beers (they come in 1 litre only) and started to learn the German sing-alongs. Pretty soon every table was standing on their benches and we were all draped arm-in-arm singing and klinking. What really surprised us wasn’t the camraderie or the sheer amount of beer being drank, but the scope of the tent and the quality and cleanliness of both the tent and the Bavarians in their lederhosen and dirndl. The materials used were actually very expensive. As we were unsure of what the day would be like we left our camera at our hosts apartment, but we did go back the next day to shoot a few photos. Oh, and how did we do at Oktoberfest? Let’s just say everyone won.