7 p.m. Me, Kari and Robin decide to head to Octoberfest and are briefly concerned that we won’t know how to get there. When we step out of the hotel, there are thousands of people dressed in Lederhosen and bavarian dresses all herding in the same direction. We join the flow.
7:30 p.m. Found it!
7:35 p.m. As we’re waiting in line for cash, a very small, 20-something man shuffles over to us with a wurst hanging out of his mouth. He mumbles something in an unintelligible language and looks at us with huge, puppy-dog eyes. “What?” I say. He looks at his hotdog, then over our shoulders. “I just want to go home.”
Then he shuffles away.
8 p.m. Find a table at a beergarten! Yay! Sit down next to a woman, her two children and her husband. We order our beers while being regaled with what we assumed were traditional beer-drinking songs…until we realize they’re all singing the first few riffs from that White Stripes Song “Seven Nation Army.” Seriously?
8:05 p.m. Must get picture of beer lady. Snap picture of her and she almost trips from the flash in her face:
8:15 p.m. “I think I’m drunk,” Kari says, looking at her half-drunk beer. I’m suddenly worried.
8:20 p.m. We compare the size of our beers to the size of our heads.
8:30 p.m. 25 Italians assault our table and assume we can understand what the hell they’re saying. This is not true.
9 p.m. A british man adopts us as his children and starts systematically removing the Italians.
9:30 p.m. A group of people who live in Amsterdam and are staying in a van by the river tries to kidnap us.
10 p.m. Italians try to use me to get INSIDE the beer tent, which is actually not a tent but a large, hangar-like structure. Because I am not a blond with huge breasts or a battering ram, we fail.
10:30 p.m. I am somehow inside of the tent with an American dressed as a monk. People keep asking him to bless them
11 p.m. Tents close. I don’t know where my friends are. I find the biggest sausage ever and wander around looking for more beer.
12 a.m. Here is a snippet from the drunken online chat I have with my boyfriend:
me: Baby?
