Oktoberfest sans children

After a lovely day with the kids on the wiesn, Daphne and I were invited by my good friend Oliver to join him inside one of the Oktoberfest tents. We met him and many of his friends outside of the tent at 5:30.

It was striking how different the fairgrounds became from earlier in the day. There were a few more "Bierleichen" (German for "beer corpses").

Oliver is an old friend and introduced us to some "Prussians"(also known as non-Bavarian Germans), two guys from Norway, two Swedes, and an Austrian. With us as Americans, we rounded out the Bavarian festival.

Oliver has connections and was able to reserve a table in the elevated "reserved" section which is like sitting in the luxury box at Yankee stadium. It was great. We only stayed for a couple of hours but were able to get a feeling for the fun.

Oliver was horrified that his two Swedish friends bought the tourist hats so Daphne joined in the fun.

The pictures cannot capture the frenetic, chaotic feel of the tents. It also doesn't capture the heat - it's hot. They ordered off the menu (choice of half-a-duck or half-a-chicken) while Daphne and I had a big pretzel. Daphne also managed to eat a huge bowl of red cabbage.

Great fun and we were home by 9pm. The others stayed out quite a bit later.