It's really all about the culture

After Berlin I met up with Shane a friend from high school who is now stationed in Kaiserslaughtern with the airforce. We hung out at his home for two-three days enjoying his home brew and cooking massive amounts of meat.

From there it was on to Munich. Shane and four other friends had rented an RV and found room for me to sleep on the padded bench used for sitting around the table. Fortunately we didn't have to stick with the original idea of a tent for me because it drizzled almost the entire time.

Oktoberfest is a strange event to explain. Obviously there is a lot of beer (although I just went to learn about German culture). The steins are huge, I think a liter and the waitresses carry around a bunch of them in their Bavarian styled clothing. We spent most of our time between two beer halls.

The Lowenbrau beer hall has a huge lion on the outside that occassionally lets out a Low  en   brau roar. I can't think of the other beer hall's name right now, but it was very scenic. There were hops haning all over, kind of like decorative plants. The interior of both were fairly similar. There are rows after rows of tables, people from all over the world drinking their liters, all very friendly, a few silly looking tourists wearing lederhosen (sp?) and spirited bands on a central stage. Kind of like a raised island. The band is really into it with loud brass instruments ruling over all the rest of the noise occurring in the beer hall.

A few surprising things stood out to me. One was that groups of people would spontaniously singing "hey, hey baby, I want to know if you'll be my girl." It just didn't seem like the most obvious Oktoberfest song. A long with that the band played several American songs, I'm blanking on a lot of them but I know I hear New York, New York and a John Denver song, possibly called Country Road? I'm not sure I have to admit I'm not up-to-date on my John Denver.

It was an environment that was just overloading to the senses. I have a few pictures that I was planning on getting up today along with the old ones that haven't made it yet. All my Europe pictures are on a cd, the problem is that the computer I'm typing at doesn't have a cd drive! If not tomorrow morning it will be awhile, I'll see what I can do.