Oktoberfest Day Three: Into the Beast Again

There is a point where the sheer volume of beer you consume has a cumulative affect. On day three we were still feeling the the `smarty-head`affect of Day One and yet, we were still game! After much morning lounging and tucking in to a nice breakfast we were off to the “Weisen” for the festival. It was cold, extremely foggy and still crowed at 9am.

We arrived at about 9:30am and cued up for the Hippodrom (read the most popular beer tent at the festival). We had to be number 200 in that line but at 10am the doors opened and we secured a brilliant seat inside. Note that you really need to arrive early in order to get a seat. There is much jockeying after the tent fills up.



By 10:10 we had our first beer in hand and were off to the races. It should be noted that both Forrest and I were approaching this like work: aka, pushing beer downrange at 10am is both a task and not without its difficulties (good God I swore off this stuff yesterday!). But the Bavarian folk around us were game and so we had to represent. By 10:30am we had our first ‘Hendel’ or roast chicken and we well and truly on our way. Those little chickens are bloody brilliant!

Tip One for Oktoberfest: Eat, eat and eat. The only way you can survive a 5 litre day is to eat constantly.
I might mentioned this quite a bit but I can`t emphasize it enough. You need to consume a great deal of food to offset the sheer volume of beer.

We stuck around for another litre at the Hippodrom and by now things were really picking up. We had the band going full on and by 12:00 noon there were people dancing on the benches.

Tip Two: if you want to secure a seat inside a beer tent, be there by opening (10am). Yeah, the Hippodrom filled up in about 15 minutes and there were at least a couple hundred people left looking for a seat.



Unlike our Day One, we had decided to pace ourselves on Day Three. Sure, some of you might call this in to question (or at least our manly drinking ability) and then ask what happened to going all guns? Well to be honest we really wanted to enjoy Day Three without feeling like we had to prove that we could drink our weight in beer. Our calculation was one litre of beer every 1.5 hrs. Modest and yet still somewhat of a challenge over a 5 litre day.

Tip Three: Pace yourself. No really, its not a fricking race!

For beer three we moved out into the sunshine at the Hacker tent. We found some room beside a family from outside of Munich. Again, we had food with our beer (see Tip One) and as with all food at Oktoberfest its genuine, delicious and simple fare.

After beer three we decided to take a break. The nice thing about having a hotel so near the festival (6 blocks away), we were able to go back at 3pm for some rest. Our plan is to go back to the festival tonight for another litre of beer and some dinner... Good lord what are we thinking!


Forrest Joy and Chris Hennebery enjoying a beer outside in the sun at Oktoberfest 2008