When myself, Jeremy and Rachel came over, we all signed up with Britbound, the agency which helped get us set up here in the UK. Britbound also do events so people have an opportunity to socialise, but also operate trips from time to time. These might be guided day trips to Brighton or Oxford or Cambridge for instance, but sometimes they are done in league with a proper trip operator - usually Topdeck. "You should go!" were the fateful words of one Britbounder who I was friends with in regard to two of these trips - Royal Ascot, and Oktoberfest. After having a think about it, I decided they had a point - why not experience not only the races but the races, and why not experience the beer festival? I was getting to know quite a few Britbounders by this stage and it would be good to go to these events with a crowd of people I got on with. Aside from that, the Oktoberfest trip seemed cheap in comparison to the others I glanced at - because Britbound had basically booked out a Topdeck coach, and had gotten a discount accordingly that was then passed onto the members. While Royal Ascot was technically my first trip with Topdeck, Oktoberfest would be my first foray into the multi-day coach trip and it was with Topdeck also. I wasn't entirely sure what I was in for - the style of trip would be completely different to anything i had done before. In fact, about the only things I knew were we were riding in a bus all the way there and back, with the "there" trip being overnight at least; had two nights in tents in Munich, and had to bring a sleeping bag; and aside from the bus part of the trip being potentially painful, it should be a good time. In the lead-up to the trip, Britbound staged "Stein Training Sessions" as a way for members of the group to get to know each other ahead of time, as well as practice drinking from the 1-litre Steins; and along the way, the trip description changed from being a 4-day trip to a 5-day trip which required myself (and a bunch of others) to have to seek an extra day of leave (this being caused by Jake, our Britbound trip leader, miscounting the number of days when he originally put up the description!). I don't own a sleeping bag, but I was lucky enough that Jeremy and Rachel agreed to lend me their one; and having obtained my "outfit" to wear at the festival, I was set - it was just a matter of waiting for the trip to roll around!
Day 1 - London to Calais by Ferry, and into Europe
Day 2 - Oktoberfest Day 1
About 7.30am Courtney got on the bus intercom and announced we were on Munich's outskirts and not far away from the campsite - we'd made up time during the night. For Sasha, this was essentially the official "Welcome to Germany" - despite having covered a lot of Europe so far, she had not yet been to Germany. We pulled into the camp site just before 8am, a good half an hour earlier than we had expected to. After a briefing on what the story was at the camp ground, our passports were collected for safekeeping, we were allocated tents, given another wristband with that tent allocation on it, gathered our stuff off the bus and went and put it in the assigned tent. The tents were all uniform blue and grey dome tents (with Topdeck branding!), the kind that can fit up to 3 people with no extra room or more comfortably accommodate two people. They had airbeds in them, already blown up. Once that was done, it was off to the big white tent for breakfast, which was to be provided each day. Upon entering the tent, a number was written on our hands or wrists (to indicate we were the however-many person to enter the food tent, to keep track of whether they still need to be pumping out the food - but also prevent us from stealing seconds I guess), we collected a tray with a plate and then followed the counter and got the food we wanted. First up was the cooked breakfast food - toast, scrambled eggs, German sausage and mushrooms, choice of tomato or barbeque sauce; a selection of German jams for the toast if wanted (I managed to get strawberry, although there were the usual German ones of apple etc in there); a bowl of cereal if you wanted (with a cornflake or cocoa-puff-like option, I got neither); and then tea, coffee, water or cordial (I went with tea). The breakfast was quite yum, but pretty heavy on the garlic in the sausage and especially the mushrooms (I like garlic, but this was surprisingly pushing my tolerance level of the stuff!). After breakfast, we went to the yellow gazebo and bought some shower tokens to use the hot water in the showers (€1.80 for 8 minutes of hot water! but what choice do you have?) but we decided not to have showers then - time was getting on, and we wanted to get to the festival grounds as soon as we possibly could before the beer tents filled up (and surely the smell of beer will overpower all anyway?). So that meant getting our outfits on - for the guys, this was the Lederhosen shorts with straps and a checked or white shirt; and for the ladies, this was the Dirndl dress. Most people had brought their outfits ahead of time - I bought mine off of Amazon, for quite cheap (£10!) and it came with a hat as well. The range of prices for Lederhosen were quite something - I'd seen a proper leather pair in Wernigerode with Dion, and had been shocked to see they were €150 a pair! Basically it looked like anyting above £60 was going to be actual leather, anything lower than £30 you could guarantee was fabric and anything in between might be or might not be. Because it was so cheap I knew it would be fabric, which did a very good job of imitating the leather - but I did wonder for a while whether I should look at getting a leather pair until Sasha saw them and said they'd be perfectly fine. I got some appropriate long socks, decided to use my good pair of black shoes I had acquired for Ascot, and went on the hunt for a shirt - I had a white shirt which would have done, I found plenty of blue checked shirts which would have been passable but I wanted a red or green shirt with the right size of checks. Lots of the shirts I found had closely-spaced checks, particularly the blue ones but I wanted to try and get as close to the "right" size of check spacing as I could. Eventually I found a red shirt, which I decided would do the trick with a tshirt worn underneath for extra warmth. Under the Lederhosen I also wore shorts, as that was more comfortable and also acted as a guard just in case my fabric Lederhosen fell apart or got ripped or something. I got dressed in my tent, and once done I opened up the tent door and was confronted by a rather unexpected sight. In front of my tent, with his back to me talking to some others was one of our tour group in his Lederhosen - but he'd opted for the tight, bright yellow "Bruno" version which certainly stood out. Remember that I'm coming out of a low tent, and he's got his back to me so the first thing I see when I open the door as I try to emerge is his bum, basically. I think I exclaimed "Whoa!" at which point he turned round and laughed, and said "Got a bit of an eyeful there did ya?". Sasha arrived not long after, in her very stylish proper-style Dirndl that she'd also got online but from a different site.
Day 3- Oktoberfest Day 2
Day 4 - Munich
Day 5 - Crossing the Channel, drive to London
Summing up
This had been my first proper multi-day coach tour of the fabled type done in Europe or all over really - I didn't quite know what to expect, and I knew some aspects of the trip might be pretty un-fun such as the sleeping on the bus or sleeping in tents in the cold, but leading up to the trip I was approaching it with a level of naivety where I knew it could be bad (and everyone was telling me so) but I'd never done it before so didn't know for sure how bad it might be. On the whole though, I was pleasantly surprised about how okay it actually was - the bus ride there absolutely sucked in terms of not getting any sleep while travelling through the night, lets be clear about that - however staying in tents was better than I expected (aside from maneuvering in them was awkward because you couldn't stand fully up in the dome tents), I didn't freeze at night like I thought I might and slept rather decently in the tents. Having the extra bottle of water in the tent did help, although getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathrooms in the cold and dark was one downside. For a few nights, it wasn't bad at all - however I imagine doing weeks on end moving from one tent site to another could get a bit tedious if you were doing a longer trip, or if you were sleeping on the bus occasionally too while on the move. Speaking of which, the bus ride on the way back was actually quite good given i got decent sleep on it. I am a fan of being able to cover distance while asleep, and making better use of your available time - hence why I've used overnight transport before. The one overnight bus experience I'd had previously was the overnight Intercity bus between Wellington and Auckland, which in general wasn't great as we didn't get much sleep and the bus got thrown around a bit due to all the winding roads (although I did make a good friend on the bus that time). Overnight trains and overnight ferries still beat overnight buses, just as they do for daytime transport too but I would much prefer an overnight bus as we did rather than travelling all day by bus. Flying into places and staying the night still ranks high as the easiest - but its not always the cheapest, sometimes decidedly not so! For someone who is quite used to travelling around and having to figure stuff out for myself and plan it out, it was quite refreshing to have someone else (in this case, Topdeck) organise all the details for the most part but leave wiggle room for you to do your own thing. Having said all of the above, I think what helped make it was the company I was with - going with a large group of people, a lot of whom I knew and got along with, and in particular Sasha, rather than a bus load of people I didn't know and having to make friends along the way made a huge difference to the whole experience. In that regard, the fact it was a Britbound Tour rather than a Topdeck Tour as such, made the difference.
As for Oktoberfest itself? Just awesome. I didn't quite expect it would have all the amusement ground rides it had, but I am quite glad I got in two solid days at the festival and got to experience both the beer "tent" and beer garden experiences. The beer tent experience in the Paulaner tent was just the best - I've always quite liked Paulaner beers, but now I have a whole other reason to be fond of the brand for the atmosphere in the tent was just something else. I'm not certain I could have done three days in a row at the grounds drinking beer however - two days was about the right amount of time in my view. Now I can also say I've been there, done that and have a whole bigger appreciation what its about. I think though, if the likes of Denise and David were to go there, they'd be somewhat disappointed due to the blandness and lack of variety of the beer available - particularly if they had in mind that it could be similar to Marchfest in Nelson, which I don't think it is (I haven't done Marchfest so I'm only going on what I have heard). Some people went hard with the drinking and then burned out fairly early on (something I expected) - others of us took our time and lasted the distance. I don't know who did the most Steins out of our group or what the top number consumed was, but as for Tom on his 21st even though he wasn't able to keep count he certainly did not get anywhere close to 21 Steins, that's for sure. At one stage he fell asleep into his Stein at the table in the Paulaner tent - he is not a big drinker and doesn't quite have the stamina to stay the distance! It took a bit to get your head around the fact that although you seemed to be taking quite some time to drink your glass of beer, that you shouldn't try and pick up the pace as every glass counted for 2 pints or 3 standard drinks (being 1 litre each).
Munich itself? What little I actually saw, it seems a nice enough city - the Hofbrauhaus was definitely a highlight, but I'm not really sure what else there might be to do there and in that respect, it seems like a lot of German cities where there's some stuff but its nothing hugely special over and above other German cities. Oktoberfest seems to be its main drawcard, unless you're using the city as a springboard to go visit the Neuschwanstein Castle from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and other things. Having said that, I didn't really delve too deep to find out what there was to do - we weren't really there long enough to consider much over and above what we already did and saw.
So the constant question - would I go back? On a Topdeck trip (or similar) - yes, the experience has not scared me off at all. To Oktoberfest? A very emphatic yes, although I know that unless I went with a good crowd of people, it wouldn't be quite the same. Its definitely a social event, going with others is what makes it. To Munich, as a city? I probably wouldn't attempt to go back to visit it as a city in itself - unless there was a drawcard to go there for, or unless it was a convenient stopover/springboard location, I don't think I'd have much reason nor desire to go back there when there's so many other places to travel to. I liked it, sure - but I didn't come away with the wow factor from the place as a whole in itself.
But yes, on the whole, a blast. As for the next set of travels? well that constitutes the next blog post, funnily enough. Remember how I mentioned Sasha travelled off from Munich to Dresden? well she was using the Oktoberfest trip as a springboard to do a little tour of Germany, ending up in Berlin the following weekend. She invited me to join her in Berlin for that weekend - Berlin is certainly somewhere I've been wanting to visit, so I jumped at the chance. So next post: Berlin!
One last thing...
The loss of Little Joe and Shazza is rather gutting, but it doesn't make sense. Who steals money, AND a selfie stick, AND two soft toys (and Sasha's battery juice pack) but then dumps the bag still containing other things? Seriously? Sasha's bag wasn't the only thing stolen from the table at that time either, at least one other person had their GoPro stolen. I've often pondered the whole thing in the time since Oktoberfest and can't help but wonder if we got it all wrong. Little Joe particularly, but also Shazza seemed to be particularly fond of alcohol - and I wonder whether they felt they were in their element at Oktoberfest and didn't want to leave, drunkenly schemed and grabbed Sasha's cash, the selfie stick and the GoPro to put on the Selfie Stick, the juice pack with which to charge the GoPro with and then ran away together into the festival grounds to go have their own separate adventures in Oktoberfest and Munich forever more...