Munich: They Have Beer Here

It seems like it’s time to post an intermediate entry about Munich. My time here is coming close to an end, but I should probably save myself something to do on tomorrow’s train to Vienna, so I’ll talk about Oktoberfest and the Deutsches Museum.

Part of the reason I scheduled my trip at the time that I did was so that I’d have an opportunity to attend Oktoberfest. Well, I did it and now I can cross it off of the bucket list. To me, Oktoberfest was like a state fair except that there are 14 or 15 tents holding thousands of people each full of people drinking beer and singing drinking songs. The fair part is pretty standard. There are booths selling German fair food – sausages, schnitzel and fish. There also are rides and general fun for the whole family. Inside the tents, in the traditional Munich beer hall tradition, there are hundreds of picnic tables with people drinking beers out of liter glasses and usually a band on a stage in the middle leading everybody in song.

During the day, there were lots of families, including small kids, enjoying the rides and eating the sausages and fish. Gradually, as it gets later, the park gets more and more crowded and eventually is filled with people who have been drinking for several hours and there are plenty of the typical signs of people who have been drinking for several hours. I won’t go into those signs here.

I enjoyed some food (1/2 meter Bratwurst anybody?) and then made my way into a tent on Friday to enjoy some liquid refreshment. I met some people and went through a few liters of beer, and generally had a good time, but it wasn’t all I had hoped. Perhaps if I was with some good friends. Perhaps if I was a bit younger. Perhaps if I was just in a mood to get really drunk. I don’t know. I just left thinking that it lacked something. Of course, I went back the next day to try again, but the results were the same. It was a good time, but I’m not counting the minutes until I return.

The Deutsches Museum was unlike any other museum I’ve been to here in Europe. Most of the other museums were full of art and/or historical artifacts. Being Germany, the Deutsches Museum concentrated on technology and industry. There were sections on aviation, astronomy, textiles, power machinery and printing/paper technology. It also included an excellent planetarium. Again, it wasn’t the Louvre, but it turned out to be very interesting in its own right.

Okay, I still have to write about Olympic Park, Schloss Nymphenburg and the fussball match I went to Allianz Arena. I’ll go into those in another post in the near future. Auf Wiedersehen!!!