Oktoberfest Day 1 (Bierleichen)

One of the biggest attractions to me starting my life in Munich was of course the possibility to live near the worlds biggest beer festival and party. This is now my first Oktoberfest, and I was and am so excited!

The Oktoberfest starts with the tapping of the keg at 12 noon, but if you try to get there around or just before that, then there is absolutely no chance you'll get a seat! It's for that reason I met my friend Alex at 8:30 so we can get into one of the big tents as soon as they open. Even then it was difficult but we found a nice spot in the Paulaner Winzerer Fähndl (big) tent. The problem is that means you are waiting in a beer tent for 3 hours before you  have your first beer. Hence the other guys didn't look that excited:

The party and the atmosphere started kicking up around 11:30, and then the brass band started walking around the hall playing some Bavarian drinking songs. Then the owner of the tent took a microphone and started talking and counting down the seconds to 12 from 45 seconds! That was a bit boring.


The first beer was served at 12, but we didn't get ours for another 40 minutes. Once it arrived the mood got really good. I drank mine a little faster than I should, causing problems later in the day (more on that later). The Paulaner Oktoberfest beer was quite nice, but too Lagery for my tastes, does the job though at 6.5% alcohol!

The mood improved a lot when the beer arrived

Inside the tent was really nice, the people were nice. I'll put it this way, there was a lot of eye candy everywhere!

And on to the name of this post (Bierleichen). It is a term used by Germans, or experienced Oktoberfest visitors, it means "Beer Corpses". It refers to the youngsters that don't realise the strength of the beer, get too drunk and pass out. While technically this didn't happen to me it kinda did. On the way home I either tripped, slipped or plain fell and broke my finger! It needs an operation and everything, my first visit to Oktoberfest!

The last 2 posts have been typed one handed because of this lol, but anyway it was so fun, and can't wait to get back there! 


Viel spaß homies!

Ausländer in disguise (Lederhosen!)

A lot of non-Germans I have met in Munich are hesitant to get a pair of Lederhosen for reasons such as they "just don't get it" or they think they don't know or feel part of the culture enough to partake. I'm not one of these people so I decided to get a pair to try and disguise myself as a Bavarian (until I spoke obviously). On the topic of speaking; I'm now 10 months into my Munich adventure, and I would say my German is not bad, but still a long way to go. I think I might write a post in German (ohne Übersetzer).

Anyway, here are my Lederhosen:

If you were to come visit me during Oktoberfest would you get a pair of Trachten (Traditional costume, in this case Lederhosen or Dirndl)?

Viel spaß homies!

Seehaus Biergarten

So it's a hot day in Munich, you don't have to work and you feel parched for a beer. What to do? The obvious answer is to go to a beer garden, but which one? There are over 50 to choose from.

My choice will normally be Seehaus, a really nice beer garden in the heart of the Englischer Garten by a lake. It serves Paulaner beer, one of my favourites of the Munich breweries, the prices are OK too, at €7,40 for a maß.

It so happened that I had some good news from work to celebrate, so I invited friends to join me here for some drinks, which turned out to also be some hair of the dog treatment after a very long and free cocktail night out. 

Anyway here are the pics :)

Breakfast of champions :)

So this is a really good beer garden, you should go! 

Oh and my parting gift - a duck gone insane...

Viel Spaß homies!

Today's Office (2)

Some days at work are better than others, last week included two of my best ever days!

So the scenario is that me and my colleague Selim were tasked with determining the roaming behaviour of our Sony Ericsson devices; the closest place for us to do this from Munich is Austria. So between us we were driving around an area known to have "difficult radio conditions", meaning handing over from 3G to 2G etc. While Selim was driving I got these couple of photos...

This is a really amazing part of the world, but the best bits were seen when I was driving! We have a large van, so when we are working in the back we can't really see much, but when driving these mountain roads it's really amazing! I wanted to come back with my bike but the following weekend was rainy and I couldn't find the motivation :(

I'll add all the photos to Picassa (because it's better than Facebook...) Link to follow.

Anyway, that was a cool couple of days work. I'll definitely go back! (both for work and for fun) anyone want to come with me?

Viel Spaß homies!