Vintage Oktoberfest

Since Oktoberfest began 200 years ago it is more of a celebration than ever, although this is a photo of the calm before the storm. Vendors were finishing their set ups and Theresienwiese was relatively quiet.

The old-fashioned area with old rides, costumes, animals, and horse races opened the day before the actual kick off, so we were happy to take part in the festivities. It costs 4€ to enter, but it's definitely worth checking out. After all Jubileumswiesn was 200 years in the making!

The animal area is very impressive. They have sheep, cows, horses, rabbits, turkeys, and freshly hatched chicks.

Keeping with the Oktoberfest theme there is plenty of beer, but the beer in the Jubileums area is slightly different. All 6 breweries got together to help in creating it the old way straight from the wooden kegs and it's available at the Festzelt for 8.80€ / litre. It's a bit stronger in taste and alcohol.

It appeared as though many tourists didn't realize it was happening, because there weren't as many people as I would have expected.

On our way over I was talking to our cab driver about the supposed controversy between several brothels in the area. One is said to give the cabbies 120€ / person they bring, so the other brothel is complaining. He said since he's a day driver he doesn't know too much about it, but he did say he had a Turkish business man that wanted a 'typical German woman'. He wasn't sure what that meant, so he took him to several brothels to check out the ladies. The cab driver said the Turkish man found one he liked, but she was the cleaning lady and her services weren't for sale. Cab driver stories are always so random.

Amazingly we were his first trip to Oktoberfest this year.

In the Festzelt there were traditional Goaßlschnalzen whip crackers and locals with their festive costumes and kitted out tracht.

It makes me love our city that much more - they definitely know how to celebrate and incorporate tradition at every turn. They also make things so family friendly.

This is a great site to buy Oktoberfest decor and celebrate yourself if you're not able to make it.

Deutsches Museum

On a drizzly day there is nothing better to do than head to a museum. I was excited when Lauren picked the Deutsches Museum because I had sadly never visited.

We walked through the halls admiring enormous airplanes, boats, and tunnel construction. I was really fascinated by that. I can't say I was too reassured looking at the cross section of a Lufthansa plane. Is that seriously all that's under there? I guess they have to keep them as light as possible and my enormous bags probably don't help.

Now I know that with my love of subways that I need to head to the MVG Museum here in Munich. If you are in love with subways like I am, you can check out the Metro Bits website that has loads of information on cities with subways.

My other favorite areas included the arts - photography, glass, ceramics, paper, and printing. We were too late for any of the demonstrations, but it was still nice to see walk through the exhibits.

In the photo exhibit they had quite a collection of cameras and information about how they function. I loved their transparent touch screen that allowed you to pick cameras you were interested in to obtain more information.

It was rather cute in the paper area that they had small origami stations and people could try to build the strength of paper using folds. Even the wall and seats were made of cardboard. Lauren tested her hand at making something (we didn't really know what it was) and eventually gave up.

The printing rooms were really impressive. There were really old presses and even a small area about the art of bookbinding. They were all so German thanks to Johann Gutenberg.

I also learned that Germany was very important in making color during the 19th century. I loved their vials of bright colorants.

After going to the museum we headed over to Gast for dinner. We had a great time and tomorrow Stefan comes home to join in on the fun. We'll be going to the Oktoberfest and Coldplay concert.