Munich vacation, final thoughts

Wow...we've been home for almost FIVE days now...and Munich seems like 10,000 miles away already...almost like it never happened (funny how vacations do that...you come home and by the first day back at work it's almost like you never left). But we WERE there...and going thru my pictures brings it all back. Here are some last pictures that brought me right back to our stay in Munich...(and btw, I can hardly wait to go back!).

 John and Peggy with our FIRST beers in Munich. This  was after we had checked into the hotel, then went down to Marianplatz for our first meal after getting off the plane. We are all having a very tasty Weiss-bier (wheat beer). MMMMMMMMM! The beers are Schneider Weisse by the way.

Jeannie and I with OUR first beers! I LOVE GERMAN WEISS-BIERS!

 My first meal....pork cutlets and some kind of German potatoes (John could tell you what exactly they are). I LOVE THE FOOD HERE! I can't believe they all don't weigh 300 lbs here!

 Jeannie's first meal...some kind of brat (there's lots of them)...and they are ALL DELICIOUS! Also it comes with sauerkraut.

We thought this was interesting...if your car doesn't quite fit into the spot, you don't necessarily have to parallel park. Just drive in at an angle and leave...we saw this many times during our stay.

Here I am with ANOTHER Weiss-bier at a little cafe down at Marianplatz. Did I mention that I LOVE Weiss bier's? This one is from Augustiner.

Don't know the name of this building, but it's right where you come up from the train at Marianplatz. About half-way up is a life-size glockenspiel (the moving parts of a cuckoo clock that go round and round is my best explanation). It goes off every hour for about 10 minutes and is accompanied by music and bells tolling, and draws quite the crowd. It's an amazing building, certainly nothing like that here in the states.

This was my meal with Jeannie at another cafe...I think it's just pork roast with a potato dumpling, and the little strip on top of the pork is a strip of pig-skin that is super-crispy and amazingly DELICIOUS! I could live here! And this time I'm having a Lambier Weiss-bier.

In one of the grand halls, Jeannie and I (with John's friend David, who is attending his 30th CONSECUTIVE Oktoberfest btw) behind us giving us the two-thumbs up on our giant pretzel. Drinking beer and eating all day with 10,000 of your closest friends.....what a nice way to spend a few days! (and the 10,000 is just in the tent with us...there's probably at LEAST 200,000 people at the festival each day, likely many more).

Probably my FAVORITE food of Oktoberfest...the rotisserie chicken. I'm pretty sure they must be basting it with pure heroin or some other opiate drug, as it is the BEST CHICKEN I've ever had! 

 A Selfie-shot of our little group having a toast. L to R in a half-circle: John, Peggy, David (holding the beer), Jeannie and me. You can also see our serving girl directly in the back of our table...they work HARD...I have to guess in a typical day here she carries a thousand liters of beer to thirsty customers (just a guess...it could be WAY more).

The Lowenbrau hall....we never went in here but it's one of the major breweries. I recall as a young lad back in Montana (drinking age was 18) there was a place in Helena that sold Lowenbrau on tap, and it was my favorite. NEXT time I'm here I'll go in and have one of their beers and see if I still like it.

Just a shot of the crowd OUTSIDE the beer halls. There's a LOT of people here, and this is a weekday!

Another of the grand halls that we didn't go in. Maybe next time I'll make it a mission to have a beer in EVERY hall! It's do-able...but there is a LOT of them (especially if you count the smaller halls).

Here's a complete ox on the spit...(it's pretty huge). Don't see that too often! Jeannie got in line and had an Ox-sandwich...MMMMMMM!

Inside the Hacker Pschorr hall...the band in the middle of the crowd. They do quite a job putting up these halls, considering they only get used 16 days a year.

I think we're outside in the beer garden of Augustiner hall (our final day). John with a tray full of chickens.

Here I am with my LAST chicken of Oktoberfest 2015. The tastiest chicken on the planet and a liter of beer, hanging out with Jeannie, Peggy and John in Munich...what can be better than that?

Didn't really know this was a Bavarian thing...(I always thought it was Swiss)...the giant horns. They played a tune right in front of us out in the beer garden....how cool!

And this is my final picture from Germany. It's a giant poster in the train station showing the six breweries that supply beer for Oktoberfest. L to R they are Augistiner, Hacker Pschorr, Hofbrau, Lowenbrau, Paulanier and Spaten. I think the only ones I didn't have this trip were Spaten and Lowenbrau. I'll have to fix that next time.

All in all it was a FABULOUS trip. We didn't end up getting to see Neuschwanstein castle (it's the one that Walt Disney modeled his Magic Kingdom castle after). It's a long day to do that tour and we just couldn't get out of bed early enough (it's a few hours drive each way on the bus, and including the tour it's a good 10 hours of your day). Next time for SURE! And there WILL be a next time, that I can assure you! I'll get with Jeannie and John and start planning...maybe 3 years? It was a GREAT TIME, and I can only wonder why we waited so long to finally make this happen (which is what John has been telling us for YEARS. This was his 8th Oktoberfest). In honor of our trip I went down to a local craft-beer shop yesterday and bought the goods to brew a Weiss-bier, came home and brewed it. It's bubbling away in my spare bedroom right now...the recipe says it's a Franziskaner Weiss-bier clone...we shall see soon enough! I found that I can buy the Franziskaner at our local Trader Joes (imported and bottle-conditioned..which is about as good as a non-draft beer can get). Got me a six-pack back on Wednesday and have been having them every night since. I have two final pics to wrap up this post.

This is a liter mug and a liter of Paulanier that I brought home from Munich. I'm having it TONIGHT (Sunday) in honor of the LAST day of Oktoberfest 2015. Paulanier was the first tent/beer I had when we arrived at Oktoberfest. It's also now my last.

And with that, I declare this 2015 Oktoberfest and our adventure/vacation complete. Until next time.....PROST!

One FINAL picture...got this off of Spaceflightnow.com...it's a satellite picture of Oktoberfest...pretty cool! If you look REALLY close you can see me holding a beer and a half-chicken standing by the Augistiner tent!