Sometimes in field production things fall into your lap in surprisingly easy ways - tonight this kind of unexpected adventure turned out to be Octoberfest 2006. With a travel day planned for today, it seemed like a good time to experience one of the most well known yearly European events without hurting the end product. Heading into the evening, I’m not sure that I would have gone out of my way to plan a trip to Germany solely to go to an Octoberfest evening. Now that’s I’m on the other side I can honestly say it’s an amazingly worthwhile event to see in person.
I mean I’ve never seen so many people having such a wonderful time in one place in my entire life. The scene makes an NFL tailgate party look small scale. There are literally thousands of partiers from across the globe descending on Munich simply to drink and smile. Yet for such a large-scale event it’s a remarkably sane environment. No rowdiness, no fist fights, just lots of people enjoying the company of total strangers.
Peter and I arrived around 4 PM, as we were told to start the night early if we had any hope of getting an outdoor table. It turns out that 4 PM in Germany on a Friday is not nearly early enough. Instead of finding somewhere to sit and enjoy the scenery, we found packed houses everywhere we went. While this doesn’t sound dire, it’s relatively impossible to get a beer if you’re not seated at a table. So around 5 PM we started the lengthy process of trying to convince German Barmaids to serve us beer while standing in the walkways of the beer gartens. Given that neither Peter nor I speak a lick of German, this turned out to be a relatively difficult task. Luckily the universal pantomime drinking motion eventually garnered two gigantic steins of the best tasting beer I’ve ever had.
After a few rounds and several walks to different tents, we finally settled into the Lowenbrau tent and found a few seats. This dramatically changed the course of the evening as we ended up sitting next to several young Germans who we’re thrilled to spend some time hanging out with a few Americans. The level of acceptance was amazing. Unlike so many bars in the States where if you sit down next to total strangers, at Octoberfest there is no such thing as a stranger. We immediate ended up in all sorts of different conversations about what felt like an unlimited number of topics. From politics to beer and women, it was an absolutely outstanding evening to see and experience. If you can spare the time, I would highly recommend it to anyone.
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