Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit....

After almost a week without internet, and I'm back into the blogosphere! Eva and I went down to her Mom's house in Rosenheim, about 35 minutes on the Regional Train from Munich. I packed up all of my things from Eva's apartment in Mainz, and we trekked to the train station at 5:20 am for our 5:40am train. Yeah, that was not fun. Luckily she doesn't live that far from the station, but geez, that was not fun so early in the morning with my heavy suitcase! It was interesting getting into the train, because I had so much, then this crazy German lady decided she JUST HAD to get past me, with all my luggage....right lady, where am I supposed to go? Anyway, I made it, and then we made it to Munich, albeit a little delayed. We then had to get off the train (we were in one of the last compartments) and basically run to catch our next train. We made it down and across the entire train station in 5 minutes, dodging the lederhosen and dirndls, and just barely made it to our train. Finally we were off and on our way to our final destination. Eva's Mom picked us up from the station, and poor Eva had to squeeze into the back of her Mom's Audi A-5...not comfortable for her! We made it to Rosenheim, and we were just in time to watch the tapping of the Oktoberfest Keg on TV. Unfortunately time wise, we didn't couldn't make it to see it live. We watched it on TV, and then headed into Rosenheim on her Mom's two bikes. We walked around the city center, and then went back before it got dark.

The St. Nikolaus Church in Rosenheim

The next day we went to the "Trachtenumzug" which is a parade where people from all over Germany (and even Austrians, Italians and Polish people) dressed up in traditional clothing from their region. It was pretty interesting to see all of the traditional clothing....lots of lederhosen and dirndls....
Once the parade was over, we walked to the Wiesn, where all of the Oktobefest festivities take place. This is where all of the beer tents are, and where all the food and fun is.



We went down the streets, and decided we should be brave enough to enter the beer tents. Each tent is different, and has a different feel. The first one was the Hippodrom:


This tent was pretty nice....jam packed full of people, not a seat to be had, at noon....

Then we went into the Hofbräuhaus tent...



At 8 euro a Mass, that beer is all pretty expensive! Not to mention that people were selling their table reservations for thousands and thousands of euros on Ebay....

We also went up into the ferris wheel to get a better look at the Oktoberfest Wiesn:

And yes, all those little things, covering the street...those are people...!
Here is a view of the tents:


And that's all she wrote...the beer tents were something that I wanted to see, but felt like I didn't need to see any more of. Drunk tourists aren't my favorite...so we bid adieu to Oktoberfest and went back to Rosenheim after a long day of walking up and down the Wiesn. This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience!