Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, der Gemuchlichkeit!

This is Oktoberfest. Granted, its taken from last year's festival, and we were in the Augustiner rather than the Paulener tent, but it pretty accurately describes the event.

Anyway, let's recap how the trip went down.
Earlier last week -- Tom, Steve and Chance have just booked their flight, when I walk into the room and they ask me if I want to go. I do, so I book myself and Chris tickets, and then the flight filled up, so there was no more room. Yes, we booked the whole thing about 3 days before we left. Awesome.

Thursday ~2 PM -- Show up to Heathrow and check into Alitalia. Alitalia has no idea what's going on, but they end up booking us on a direct flight to Munich on Lufthansa instead of through Rome. This works out well, as we will show up at the same time as before, but we leave four hours later. For this inconvenience Alitalia gave us some vouchers to use at an airport bar. We do. Interestingly enough, the prices at the airport bar are cheaper (and for better beer) than any of the pubs around us. Also, Heineken actually tastes good this side of the Atlantic.

Lufthansa sailed us a smooth ship down to Munich, and we had the quickest customs of all time. There was literally no wait, just walk right up to the glass, flashed our passports, and into Germany we went. Now, the guy we ended up staying with was awesome. One of the guys Chance worked with this summer knew a guy in Munich where he had crashed before, Franz. Turns out Franz's family was in town, but his neighbor, Joseph, had room, so we got a place for pretty cheap. Here's where I slept:

Anyway, Joseph was about mid 50s, but was a real philosopher. Wish I had a picture of the guy, but a cool dude. We had no idea what he looked like, how old etc... just that we were going to meet him at a bar near his place. Luckily it all worked out. We also met a nice Irish girl on the train into the city that advised us about which tents were touristy, and which tents were awesome.

The next morning, we showed up at the Augustiner tent about 10 AM, which is known for having the best beer in Munich. They did. In Munich, they serve the beers in liters, and everyone was dressed in liderhosen and Bavarian dresses. Here are some pictures from the festivities:
Here is the boat that the band played on. They played a song called Ein Prosit, which sort of sounded like a national anthem. In the youtube video above, you can hear it about 20 seconds in. Being the good German nationalists that we are, we thought we'd stand up when they played the song -- of course all we got were funny looks. They played it about every 7 or 8 minutes. However, by the end of the day, many of the tables were standing up with us. Anyway, the lyrics are "Ein Prosit, ein prosit, der Gemuchlichkeit!" Which translated roughly means "Cheers, we're all in a good comfortable place!"
A view down the right side of our table with the band in the far background, behind random dude dancing on the table. Or possibly he's trying to get out to go use the restroom. Who knows? Anyway, why are you looking at her and not the cuties?











Here's myself with Tom and Chance on the right, and a guy who's name I forget on the left.












Here's the end of the day festivities with Chris, Steve and Tom. The picture is a bit blurry, which is sort of how things looked in real life too. This was about at 3:30, or 4, and it was definitely, well, time for us to make our exit.











Another view down the right side of our table. And then, a short video of our good times there:





But, lest we be confused for mere booze-hounds without any cultural interest, on Day 2, we made our way around Munich on a bike tour. If any of you are in Europe in a city with a Mike's Bike tours, I highly recommend them. Fantastic. Some of the highlights were, in order: The old town square, the statue of Munich's first real leader, a couple of a gorgeous Church that took 110 years to build, us sitting in the second largest biergarten in the world, and a video of guys who surf on a river in Munich. Here are a couple shots from that: