Oktoberfest, the German way

Beer, bratwurst, candied peanuts and enormous pretzels were staples in my diet last weekend at the Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany. Imagine thousands of people swarming around rides, food booths and beer tents. My roommate Carla and I journeyed from Dublin to the Bavarian countryside Oct. 1. Carla, being a German and having experienced the joys of Oktoberfest before, showed me quite the time. \nSaturday morning, we woke up, got into our traditional Bavarian garb and headed down to Munich. We drove for an hour on the Autobahn, (which, by the way, isn't as cool as some make it seem) to reach our destination. When we arrived, I knew that by the end of the day I would have consumed enough beer to make my recollections fuzzy.\nTo understand the event properly, imagine a theme park like King's Island in Cincinnati. Now take away all of the huge roller coasters and, in their place, put enormous, warehouse-like buildings that are tents only in name. \nEight beer tents and one champagne tent welcome hoards of visitors. Breweries like Löwenbräu, Paulaner, Schottenhamel, Hacker-Pschorr, Hacker--Festzelt, Augustiner, Hofbräu and Spatenbräu all were in attendance. The champagne tent is called Nymphenburg.\nI spent the majority of my time in the Hacker-Pschorr tent, where Carla introduced me to a lad named Flori. Dressed head to toe in a traditional Bavarian outfit, he works as a manager for the brewery and hooked us up with V.I.P. treatment: No lines, a place to sit, free liters, T-shirts and all the other goods. As soon as we walked into the tent, I was handed a beer that was double the size of my normal Irish pint. For 6.30 euros, I devoured the Schweinswurstel vom Rost auf Sauerkraut. I still don't know what this means, only that it was delicious. All I really remember is Carla reminding me why there are so many fat people in Germany. \nAfter sitting in V.I.P. and drinking a few liters, we decided to stumble around the festival. I cannot even count the number of Italians and Germans who kept coming up and asking questions or making comments in a language that I could not understand. My only confused response was, "I only speak English," and then I would turn to Carla and hope she could translate. At one point I felt like a tourist attraction because drunk Italian women were bringing their children to me saying "meet the American." \nWe walked around and rode the gigantic Ferris wheel, where we got a gorgeous view of the city and festival. We decided to revisit Flori at the Pschorr tent after partying for a good nine hours. Last call is 10 p.m. so that the drunken people will finish up and go home to prepare for another day filled with fried food and drinking. At 11 p.m. the tents close, but not for us. We all stuck around, and I had the privilege to meet men and women who have been serving at the Oktoberfest for 45 years. Women come out of retirement for two weeks out of the year to take part in this event. The gleaming smiles on their faces were exuberant because they had only one day left out of this 14-day marathon.\nUpon this excitement Flori kept feeding me shots of Italian liquor called Ramazzotti, similar to Jagermeister. "Prosit" (cheers) was their battle cry, and beer was their drink. The air had a sweet perfume laden with beer, cigarettes, candies, chocolate and bratwurst. The smell, battle cry and beer are a definite must for next year's agenda.