Let me tell you, that fish was delicious.
I don't remember what Steve and Scott ordered, but I asked for a "fish on a stick". These are whole fish cooked on a big wooden skewer, basically spit-roasted over a barbeque. There were a few different choices, but I chose the "salmon trout" - whatever that meant. I love salmon and I love trout, so I would be happy either way.
This is what that salmon-trout-on-a-stick looked like:
Sadly, it came to me wrapped up in paper rather than on a stick, but I forgave it once I had a taste of that tender, moist, delicious flesh covered in crunchy, salty skin. Mmmmmmmm!!!! On the outside it looks more like a trout, but inside that baby was alllllll salmon. SO GOOD.
Saturday was rainy and dreary and likely overcrowded at the Oktoberfest grounds, so we spent that day napping and hunting around for Bavarian souvenirs. Steve wanted to watch FC Bayern Munich play, so we headed into Hard Rock Cafe Munich to try and catch the game. Lemonade and milkshakes and potato skins and buffalo chicken wings? It was a nice taste of home.
Sunday was originally planned to be a rest day, but Steve's dad was craving fish again, so in the evening we went back to the Theresienwises, keeping our fingers crossed that we could find seats for three at the Fischer Broni tent.
We did, and along with our dinner we got some entertainment: this was our first actual evening at Oktoberfest and even though it was Sunday and I'm sure a lot of those people had to be at work in the morning, it was a huge party. People were running around yelling, people were standing on the tables singing, people were dancing in the aisles, and people were (of course) drinking lots and lots of beer. Unfortunately, all the videos I tried to take are really dark, so you must use your imagination.
ALSO: I got a beer spilled on me.
I guess that, since it was our fifth day on the Oktoberfest grounds, I should've expected it. :P Some guy from another table had come over to ours to say hello and clink glasses and talk about life; I don't really know what happened, but I heard this guy (Phil) and Steve's dad yelling something about the Blues Brothers, and Phil leaned down to give Steve's dad a hug, and one of their arms gave a hefty whack to the brand new, completely full beer on the table across from me, and a good portion of its contents ended up on my lap. AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!! Madness. I think Billy got a little bit on his head, which was sticking out of my purse, and Steve got some on his arm trying to block the flood cascading off the table, but I bore the brunt of that liquid attack. And so my only remaining pair of pants and my only remaining longsleeved shirt and my only remaining jacket were soaking wet and covered in beer.
I kept my fingers crossed that it wouldn't be cold and rainy for our last day at Oktoberfest, and while it was slightly chilly, there was no rain. And once we got into the Hacker-Pschorr tent around 11:30am on our last day, you couldn't even tell that my pants smelled like beer.
For our last day, we still had two different breweries' beers left to try, so we headed out early so we could make it to both tents and back home alive. We started off at Hacker-Pschorr and sat across the table from these three German guys who were maybe a little younger than I am. We ordered our first beer and they proceeded to tell us that they had come by train earlier that morning and were already on their fourth beer. FOURTH!!! It wasn't even noon yet and these guys had already drank the equivalent of TWELVE REGULAR (American 12-oz bottles) BEERS!!!!!! Insane. And a few minutes after our beers arrived, a guy a few tables over stood up on his bench and, to the cheers of hundreds of Hacker-Pschorr patrons, he proceeded to HOLD HIS STEIN WITH HIS TEETH AND DRINK HIS ENTIRE BEER. With no hands! A liter of beer, in like five seconds! The stamina of these Germans is amazing.
After that no-hands beer-chugging feat, I was then unimpressed with every other person standing up to chug their beers because seriously, NO HANDS. I still can't wrap my head around that. It's hard enough for me to hold my beer with one hand, but to use my teeth??? Insane. Hats off to that guy.
Speaking of Oktoberfest insanity: one of the German guys sitting with us, Jonas, had gone to the bathroom or out for a smoke or something and met a Lebanese guy. Jonas then mentioned he could only say one thing in Arabic, which is inappropriate for me to put on this blog, and so he said it, thinking it would be a funny joke to share with the Lebanese guy. I guess this guy didn't understand when Jonas said "Please don't be offended, I don't mean it, this is the only thing I can say in your language", and so this guy PUNCHED HIM IN THE FACE!!!!!! In retaliation, Jonas kicked him and ran away.
I wouldn't have believed this story, except Jonas' lip was already starting to swell and he had a little bit of a red mark on his cheek.
WTF!!!!! Sillyness.
The rest of the day was uneventful compared to all that madness. We visited the Löwenbräu tent later that day, after Steve and his dad won me a little Bavarian lion in a beer mug stuffed animal while playing a shooting game at the carnival. Sadly, somewhere between the Löwenbrau tent and the Paulaner tent, which we revisited on our way out (I don't know why; we'd already had about as much beer as we could take), I lost the lion! So sad. We even tried to retrace our steps back to the Löwenbräu tent and to the other carnival games we'd been playing, but no luck. Lion in a beer mug was gone forever. :(
By the time we got back to the apartment, it was around 10pm, which meant we'd spent almost twelve hours wandering around Theresienwiese, where we drank too much beer and Steve and his dad playing carnival games and won me prizes, like fake flowers and a tiny Bavarian lin keychain and this creepy pink dragon-snake thing holding a little pillow that says "Love". It was a good last day in terms of getting the full Oktoberfest experience in, but a bad day in terms of "I'm exhausted and drunk now, but I still have to pack because we need to leave at 7am to get to the airport and check in for our flight." Steve and his dad went basically straight to bed once we got back, but I couldn't fall asleep. I tried to stay up and pack, but was too tired to get very far, so I went to bed, where I tossed and turned for a few hours before giving up and getting up again. I was packing from about 3am until about 5:30am, when I took a nap on the couch before getting up at 6:30am to take a shower. At 7:10am we are walking out the door and at 7:30am we find ourselves on a bus to the airport, where the bus driver is driving like a crazy man, going too fast on some slightly windy roads and I am trying not to puke.
We make it to the airport, check in, and board our plane a little before 10am. An hour later, we are in Dusseldorf, where we find out our connecting flight home is delayed an hour. Almost two hours after scheduled take-off, we leave the ground and say goodbye to Germany forever. (Or at least for a few years.)
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