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.
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!
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!
Missing it already. We will return!
ReplyDeleteOh YES WE WILL!
ReplyDeleteOctoberfest : "it was the best of times, it was the WURST of times." ;) :) :)
ReplyDeleteLoved, loved, loved your photos & commentary! And I have questions, which I hope to get back here to ask some day this week. Glad you're back safe & sound! As much as you like different types of beer, it's a travesty you didn't get over to Octoberfest sooner! But it seems worth the wait for you.
Later gators! And thanks for the bday shout-out on FB! :)
My bro-in-law had been after me for YEARS to go over...but I was skeptical about how much 'fun' you can have in a beer-hall for hours and hours and multiple days...I guess it's like trying to explain color to a blind-man...you just have to 'experience' it. Now we need to start planning on going back...maybe in 2 or 3 years (it's a fairly pricey trip)...glad we broke up the flying by stopping in Boston both ways...that helped a lot (plus Boston is a really fun city too!)
DeleteGreat pics, Matt, and glad it was so much fun! But I still want to know, how can you eat so much and be skinnier than ever?
ReplyDeleteSometimes I do wish that I liked beer, or even most wines...
Rae
Hey Rae...well....I think it's mostly genetic. I've just been this way (eat anything) my entire life. I was actually a teensy bit heavy (for me) until about a year ago when I had blood-work done and came back as 'possible pre-diabetic'. I talked w/ a nutritionist, and as well as doing daily blood glucose monitoring for a few weeks I had to write down EVERYTHING I ATE for a few days. She was kind of aghast at my diet...nearly pure carbs (who knew? I thought things like grapefruit and oatmeal were good for you....pure carbs I found out). I guess I've always been like a hummingbird...I live on rocket-fuel, and have almost zero for a reserve tank.
DeleteIn light of our discussions, I made a few simple changes I could live with...my daily yogurt went to the low-fat one (cut out half the carbs), my flavored coffee creme went to fat-free...and I cut my log-cabin syrup that I use on oatmeal and eggo waffles into lite (tried the sugar free...blech! So now I mix sugar free w/ regular to make lite log cabin...half the carbs). And I sort of, mostly, cut out cookies and muffins and things like that for my morning break snack...mostly...and I have hard boiled eggs with anything like a muffin to mix a protein w/ the carbs. Made those little changes and suddenly I started dropping weight, and now have settled out about 10lbs lighter than I was a year ago and holding quite steady. Pretty much, I'm now always at my 'tour weight' without even trying. Drives Jeanie CRAZY though...(as I eat an entire pepperoni/sausage DiGirorno pizza for dinner WTIH a beer). And my little bro is even skinnier than I am. Also consider that typically ride a bike a few times a week...anywhere from 5 to 10 HARD hours of riding. That helps some I have to guess.