In 2008 I attended OKtoberfest, in Munich, Germany.  The three week festival is actually mostly in September, which would be very confusing except for the fact that the Germans call it Beerfest, which means they can have it whenever they want.  As far as I can tell, the reason it is held in the autumn, is that it is the only time they can count on enough rain to make the entire festival grounds into mud.  

One of the biggest misconceptions about Germans is that they are always serious.   If you were to judge solely on the number of people wearing lederhosen, or if you were to consider the fact that they refer to airports as “Flughafens” it is clear that there is a considerable national sense of humor.  It goes without saying that Germans are more serious than Americans.  The way I know this is the case is that only person I saw stumble out of a porta-potty and flop on the ground in front of his friends appearing to be dead, was in fact, dead, while in America, he would probably have been an actor in some show produced by Ashton Kutcher.  The other way I know they are serious and that they have a slightly different 4^th amendment than ours, is that some very angry Polizei barged into our locked hotel room in the wee hours of the morning over the very serious issue of our friend not having paid a 12 Euro cab fare. 

Our group for the festivities consisted of about 10 fun-but-reasonable guys, and a Brit who, in addition to not paying cab fares, was simultaneously ruder than Winston Churchill, more charming than Hugh Grant, and less in control of his urination than most men 75 years his senior.  The only reason it is necessary to explain the composition of my group is that otherwise I would just have to come out and say that I spent three days with someone who urinated in a potted plant in our hotel lobby and accidentally, his friend’s bed, all within 24 hours.

Beerfest takes place in Munich, in a park roughly the size of two Boston Commons, covered in confusingly-named “tents”, which are actually large steel buildings furnished to look like summer camp dining halls and which are roughly the temperature of a parked car in Phoenix Arizona.  The only way into a tent, which is the only place you can eat sauerkraut without standing in the rain, is to have a bracelet which you obtained several months in advance.  The second way is to have your British friend charm them from underage American tourists and then undertake a very confusing plan to have group members leave and return one by one until all members are inside, except for this group member, who got caught and ended up getting locked on the balcony of the wrong Marriot, which was somewhat forgivable because he never thought there would even be one Marriot in Munich, let alone two.

The types of beer available at Oktoberfest are German beers I’d never had.  In case you’re like me and aren’t well cultured in the world of international beers, beware the seductively-named “weissbier” which translates to “white beer” or “rice beer”, depending upon which of my group members you asked, but which is actually wheat bear, that will make your stomach feel like you’ve consumed four bales of hay and 13 packets of yeast, but not until you’ve consumed enough of it to make the feeling last for 48 hours.

If, while in Germany, you plan to survive on something other than your own bloated stomach from weissbeir, I recommend eating at McDonald’s because unlike many other countries, the Germans have not taken to replacing the chain’s traditional offerings with some kind of croissant and tomato sandwich.  If you are the type that really likes to eat out and enjoy another culture, I recommend ordering one of everything, and then trying to identify something that isn’t breaded meat, and giving it to whichever friend is most in need of nourishment. 

If you’re interested in a souvenir I recommend borrowing a glass from the festival itself.  If you think locating a nice glass beer stein will be difficult, think again. While in America we have aluminum bottles for sporting events and plastic cups at every function consisting of more than 6 people, at this three-week festival focused on the consumption of alcohol, the only thing provided are liter steins which weigh roughly as much as a ski boot.

All in all, enjoy your trip to Munich, I think you’ll find the people are friendly, the carnival rides are just as crappy to the ones found in America, and that nothing too bad will happen to anyone in your group, as long as the only person doing things that would get most people killed is an Englishman who’s handsome enough and has a good enough accent that people will think everything he does is funny, even when what he does is kiss someone’s wife.