The Oswalt Life: Munich, Germany

We were pretty excited about going to Munich during the "real" Oktoberfest! We arrived at the train station, found the best route to our hotel (on the metro), and an early dinner, and turned in early! We got up early to be at Oktoberfest and in a tent by 9am, to hopefully get a seat at a table. Boy, were we wrong! We got to the Hofbrau tent at 9 to find it completely full. They don't start serving beer until 12:00, so we stood around and waited to see if we wanted to hang out, or walk around. We decided to walk around and came up on the parade, now that's more my style! I love parades, and can't help really excited about them! After the parade, the mayor taps the keg, everyone cheers and the drinking begins. We were unaware of the fact that you can't get a beer unless you are sitting at a table, you can't walk up to a bar to order one.... huh what a bummer. Well, we tried to visit a few different tents to see if we could get lucky and find someone at a table that would order a beer for us, but we had no luck! At this point Kirk started to panic, he couldn't believe he was at Oktoberfest and COULDN'T GET A BEER!!! I felt so bad for him, he was so excited at first and now is so disappointed. He turned to total "pout" mode, and was in the worst mood. I couldn't snap him out of it! I hadn't researched anything about Munich or Oktoberfest, because Kirk was in charge of this one and I did the other 6 cities! I decided to make a suggestion that our hotel had given us in case we got tired of Oktoberfest, and we headed to downtown Munich. I remembered the hotel telling us to go to Hofbrauhaus's Bier Garten. Once we found it, we decided to eat across the street first at the Hard Rock Cafe..... I know, I know; but I really wanted a salad, and Kirk wanted a burger! Once we got inside of the Bier Garten and heard the music and saw the beer, Kirk's mood instantly improved! Now, he was a happy boy! This is what he thought Oktoberfest was all about, not the state fair(ish) festival we had just left. We stayed there for awhile, and then decided to do our own tour of all the local breweries! We continued our tour the next day, and also fit in a little more sightseeing and shopping. We decided to make a day trip the next day into Salzburg, Austria (the home of "The Sound of Music") seeing that it was only an hour away, and ended our stay in Munich on a much happier note than what it started!