This year was the 200th Oktoberfest. The original Oktoberfest was held to commemorate the marriage of Prince Ludwig, who later became King Ludwig I and Princess Therese.
We ended up parking about 15 km or so from the fair grounds and taking the train in. Eli loved it! He wasn’t overly impressed by Oktoberfest but he loved riding the train. He did enjoy riding some of the rides at Oktoberfest but he really loved riding on the train.
Me and the Kids on the train
Munich, well Germany in general, has a huge train system. There are multiple tracks with multiple trains. You buy your tickets from machines. Next to the machines there are multiple maps showing the train routes. On the machines there are multiple buttons for all the different type of tickets (day tickets, family tickets, round trip tickets, ect.) All in German. We picked out the one that we thought it was but before buying the tickets Ryan decided to ask for help. He asked a guy that looked like he was going to Oktoberfest (he was wearing lederhosen.) We were going to choose the right ticket after all. But we ended up paying for his ticket (using the family ticket) and he showed us where we needed to go and explain some of how the trains worked and such to us on the way.
When we first got there Ryan took the kids on a ride. There were all different cars to choose from. But the kids wanted to ride the fire truck. Another kid had already gotten in the front of the fire truck so Ryan and the kiddos crammed into the back of the fire truck together. Bonus: there was a bell the kids could ring. It just happened to be right next to Ryan’s ear. The kids really enjoyed it. Ryan… not so much.
We didn’t do much. We walked around for a bit, had some good “fair” food, Ryan got his stein. He has a collection of them going. We don’t drink beer so I call it his soda stein collection. The kids rode a couple of more rides and we left.
We did buy Caelyn a cookie. It was a gingerbread heart cookie and apparently the thing to have. They have all different sizes with all different sayings written on them. They have a string tired though them and are made to be worn around your neck (they are wrapped in plastic wrap).
After we left and had dinner at a nice German Restaurant then had some ice cream. We ate the ice cream as we were walking back to the train. Ryan had Eli on his shoulders. Our train got there before we had finished our ice cream. The train was packed with people who were leaving Oktoberfest so I couldn’t stand right next to Ryan. Eli did every well eating his ice cream cone (He got just a little bit of ice cream inside the cone. I gave him the rest of mine after I’d eaten most of the ice cream). But Ryan still got some of the ice cream all over his head. The train was so packed that he couldn’t take Eli off his shoulders and I couldn’t reach them to take the ice cream away from Eli. After a few stops the crowd thinned out a bit and we were able to sit down. We got Eli and Ryan all cleaned up and managed to get off at the right stop and find our car (by ourselves with no help from the locals ;-) ).
It was an uneventful ride back from Munich. We had a lot of fun but I’m not sure that I feel the need to go back. Especially with all of the other festivals they have here.
Think of the most crowded, dirtiest, loudest fair you have ever seen and multiply that by 10. It was raining on and off all day so I can only imagine how busy it is on days that it isn’t raining. It was kind of ironic with as big as Germans are on recycling there was trash piled and thrown everywhere. At one point we even saw a small street sweeper driving though the crowds sweeping up all the trash on the ground.
Piles of trash were everywhere. Plus dropped all over the ground. If we do go back next year I am definitely not wearing sandals again!
The Crowd
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