Munich

On Tuesday 25 Oct I got the train from Luzern to Zurich and onto St Margarthen. Here I had a look around town but it was rainy and not much to see. I got the train over to Bregenz in Austria which was a much more interesting place and the rain started to ease up. Lots of old buildings and would have been nice to sit outside for a beer if the sun was out. It is on the shores of Lake Konstance so went for a walk along there, before stocking up on some beers and getting the train up to Munich. I arrived at about 1700 and found the campsite at Thirkichen (Thai Chicken). The place was full of thousands of campers, but the tents all looked like they had been demolished... sleeping bags all in big piles in the rain and tents destroyed, all under a heavy layer of beer bottles. I found a spare spot and put up my $17 tent in the rain, threw my bag inside and headed into the Oktoberfest. Met up with Catt and we made our way to the Lowenbrau beer tent for a couple of beers. Not too big a night since all the tents close at 10:30. The partying continued back at the campsite, and I discovered that my tent was not the most waterproof one around.
The next day I went into Munich to see some sights around town. The centre was quite nice and some big churches and plenty of beer halls around. I caught up with Catt and headed to the roudiest beer tent we could find. The beer tents were very impressive with thousands of people all dancing on the tables. All the locals were dressed in their maid outfits and ledderhosen, and the beer ladies did a good job delivering 8 steins of beer through the drunken crowd. We quickly met some more Aussies and partied on until the tent closed down. Being my birthday, this was too early to finish up with the partying. I headed back to Thai Chicken and along with some more Aussies, we started our new party... security quickly put an end to that but we resumed in the dryness of the toilet block. A busload of Italians turned up almost immediately and started cooking up a huge feed of pasta, and made sure that any girls wanting to go to the toilet were forced to join the party.
On Thursday I visited the Residence Museum which was the old palace for the local kings. It was full of fancy rooms, gold plates and paintings of kings. Called into a couple of the beer tents but decided to not have a huge night.
Friday I visited the Dacau concentration camp just outside of the city. This was the first concentration camp set up my the Nazi's and the only one that operated for the entire duration of their rule. A chilling place with several of the rooms having been reconstructed and the crematorium open for visiting. I then headed back to Oktoberfest but it was too late to get in on a Friday night... all the tents were full and had huge queues. Instead I checked out some of the rides around... one ride was pulling 6Gs and not the sort of thing I would want to be doing after a few drinks. The most popular ride was just an escalator that people had to jump on to get to the top of a slide, but after many drinks they would jump on and end up going head first. This drew a huge crowd and provided entertainment for hours.
On Saturday we knew it would be busy, so along with another few Aussies from the campsite we headed in at 9am. We were worried that all the tents looked full already, with enormous queues, but we quickly found out that the front doors never get opened on the weekend, so we headed round the back and got ourselves a table and a few litres of beer. Unlucky for everyone waiting the whole day at the front door.