It's now our last of 4 nights in Munich, and the city really has been extraordinarily good to us. I don't know if it's just because everyone is in such good spirits because of the festival, or if we have just been lucky, but we have had an absolutely awesome time without really planning a thing.
Our first full day in Munich was Friday, one day before the start of Oktoberfest. We started off by heading slightly out of town for a tour of the Dachau concentration camp. I won't go on about this too much, as I don't think my words could really do the experience justice, but it was emotional. If you can visit one of these memorials and not at least feel something, then there is something wrong with you. Whilst Dachau was far from the worst camp in terms of the number of people killed, it was the first concentration camp, and provided a model for camps such as Auschwitz. The tour guide we had was very good, and the museum on the site did an excellent job of explaining everything from how Hitler's national socialist party first came to power, all the way through to the specifics of the camp, and the eventual liberation by allied forces.
After returning to town, it was time for something a bit more cheerful.
Now before I get too far into this, here is a small glossary of terms:
Wasser: water.
Bier: Beer. More common, cheaper and easily obtainable in Munich than wasser. Consumed by every Bavarian man, woman and child from birth, in vast quantities.
Radler: A mixture of half bier, half lemonade. Usually consumed by (a). Small children that aren't quite ready for full strength, and (b). Fiona.
Biergarten: Outdoor beer garden. Something which appears
absolutely everywhere in Munich. Our Ibis hotel had one, every pub, restaturant and cafe has one, we went to a museum thinking we could get away from drinking bier for a while, it had a biergarten. I didn't check but I'm sure if you went to the local hospital, there would be a biergarten there.
We met up with a good mate from home who is in town for the festival, started by having a look around the (still empty) Oktoberfest site, and finished by going to the famous Hofbräuhaus for a bier and a meal. This place is amazing. For starters, its massive. Table after table and a huge outdoor biergarten. It just seems to go on forever. There is constantly German oompah music playing, steins being drank, just a great atmosphere. I was instantly hooked and sat down with a stein in one hand and a huge pork knuckle in the other. Fee settled into a radler and half a chook. It was at about this time that we met some Aussies that were looking for a table to share. This made things interesting. They were like younger, stupider models of us, and made sure that the steins, and at some point the jager shots, kept coming. Fortunately, we managed to escape the quickly escalating drunkeness before it got too out of hand, knowing that the main event was starting the next day. Even so, it was a great night, and really gave us a taste of the Oktoberfest experience even before it had officially started.
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