It seems this will be my first post in English, this way I can share it with more people. Desculpem, amigos/familiares portugueses.
I arrived Munich on Friday at around 12:30 and my good friend Peter was already on the train station to welcome me. From there we went to see Marienplatz, the most important square in Munich with the impressive Rathaus (City Hall) and Frauenkirche (Cathedral). We didn't spend much time there, because that day we had a mission:) Some minutes later we were at Peter's place where he had a traditional German lunch. Pretzels, Wiener sausages with mustard, dark bread, cheese, franziskaner beer and the very bavarian weisswurst (white sausage) with Weisswurstsenf (bavarian sweet mustard). A very nice and very fulfilling meal which was important as we wouldn't eat anything till the end of that day...
Around 15:30 we were at Theresienwiese also know as d'Wiesn, the ground of the OktoberFest. First impression: it's huge! It looked like a town fair amplified several times. Lots of tents selling stuff and lots of rides. You could easily realise why that weekend was called the "Italian Weekend". You could see several groups of Italians screaming Italian stuff. In one end of the main street you could see Bavaria standing like a greek goddess. We strolled a little a bit and then sat on a biergarten waiting for some friends. Immediately you would feel the nice atmosphere of the Fest: music, people drinking, people talking with others who never seen before (like a guy telling me he travels to Portugal 3 times a year), good mood...
Our friends arrived, we drank some more and we head off to get in a tent, but that would be tricky. We didn't even try the tent near us as the queues where huge. The first one we tried they were asking us to buy a champagne bottle for a exorbitant price. At this time it started to rain and we went to a tent in shape of a chocolate castle. Basically you would only find old people and kids... After a short time feeling awkward we look at each other and decided to leave and this time we would be successful getting in a tent. I think we got in Schutzen-Festhalle tent, but not completely sure...
The tent is something really impressive, hundreds of tables with long benches and a band in the middle of it. As you can imagine it was packed. As incredible as it may seem the table service was quite good. The ladies, which could be carrying 15 mugs of beer, cut across the crowds pushing anyone in their way to get the beer/food delivered to it destiny. With some difficulty we found one seated place free, one sat there, the others stuck around and eventually we took over the whole table:) The environment was magnificent, people were talking, singing, standing on the benches, dancing on the tables, drinking and some of course, were falling. Like one guy who fell on our table and spilled half of Peter's beer... what a waste, 4.5€ immediately lost. I even won a hat:) Basically it was on the table, I asked who was the owner and one guy, owner or not, said "it's yours":-D At some point near the end, everyone was standing on the benches singing :-)
After that we hit another biergarten and then we went to ride some bumper cars. I think I drove pretty well considering the 5L of beer inside me. Should have gone for the real car, muahahah :-D
Then we caught a taxi, went to some club not that great, McDonald's (not a good idea, read future post) and walked home. In short a wunderbar day :-)
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