Beer madness

Believe it or not, but I didn't do any knitting on the weekend. We had a guest from Melbourne, Australia, and showed her some of Munich's sights.

Like the inside of the Theatinerkirche for example...


...or the Hofbräuhaus...


...where we met some locals (I took our guest E.'s picture with that guy, and then they wanted to take my picture with him too. Oh well.)


And, of course, the Oktoberfest! In Germany it's also called "Wies'n" (pronounced "Veesn"), because the grounds where it takes place used to be just a plain field, outside Munich. Now it's in the middle of the city, but the grounds are only used three times a year: for the Oktoberfest, for a Christmas market, and for a Fest in spring (this fest is similar to the Wies'n, with rollercoasters and stuff, but way less beer tents).

This is the official entrance to the Oktoberfest grounds... and there's always loads of people. In the background you can see some of the beer tents.

As I mentioned before, the Oktoberfest was opened on Saturday. And when I say "beer tent", then I'm not talking about a camping sized tent... the biggest one holds more than 8.000 people inside!





And they sure sell Lebkuchenherzen (gingerbread hearts) at the Oktoberfest! I guess if you


Unfortunately (or, unfortunately for our guest), we didn't make it inside a tent. They (there's about 14 large ones, and some smaller ones that hold "only" 100-500 people) were all closed because they had reached their maximum capacity, but we were lucky enough to find a few seats outside the Hofbräuzelt... and people were still going crazy, no matter they were outside.

Did you ever want to see grown up drunk people dance to "YMCA"?