For those of you who don't know, I work on the SRE team at Google. This year the Zurich SRE team offsite was Oktoberfest! Does it get much cooler than that?
The offsite was two days (one night) from Friday September 26 to Saturday September 27. For those of you going "eh, Phil, why are you going to Oktoberfest in September?" the answer is, because that's when it is - the last two weeks in September, and the first weekend in October.
We got on a bus at the office at 10am on Friday to head up to Munich. It's about a 4 hour trip. About 30 minutes before the Swiss-Austrian border, I realized I forgot my passport and my Swiss work permit! After talking to my director, Emmanuel, and the bus driver we decided to just hope they didn't check us (the other option was letting me off at the nearest train station, I go home, get my passport, and take a train to Munich).
Fortunately, we passed the Swiss-Austrian border and the Austrian-German border without incident. The bus took us straight to the fest to drop us off before dropping our luggage off at the hotel. And we were there!
It's big. Really big. Some folks from the office had been up all week and had gotten a table at 9am (the only time you can). There were a few empty seats, so some of us sat and others stood. As people got up we just expanded until everyone was sitting.
Well, we ordered what you order at Oktoberfest: beer and wurst! You don't have beer choices at Oktoberfest. You get Oktoberfest beer, which according to the link above, since the 1970s, has been a pale lager between 5 and 6% abv. You get a liter of this. If you want more, feel free to order multiple, but there is no other size and no other beer.
If you're sitting, then you are in - or around - a tent. Each tent is owned by a brewery, and that's the maker of the beer you are drinking. We were at the Hacker-Pschorr tent - though not inside. Interestingly, the people serving you are not employed by the brewery. They go inside, buy a beer, and then sell it to you for an extra Euro (or 2 or 3 as the night goes on). I don't know if this is just for the service outside tents or not.
Anyway, a liter is a lot.
But Oktoberfest is more than beer and sausage. It's a huge festival full of rides, roller coasters, bumper cars, games, challenges, and more. It's fairly reminiscent of a carnival, except bigger. After our first beer, a few of us decided to go explore.
There were a lot of "make you sick" type rides. This was the most tame of them and two of the group decided to give it a go. Pictures of the ride, of them, and of a girl wearing traditional Bavarian wear (dirndl) (little easier to get away with taking a picture of someone on a ride than someone walking past you, and I wanted a picture of the dress).
Some more of the area.
This, was one awesome piece of machinery! You jump into a conveyor belt that's moving uphill very fast and try not to fall over. When you get to the top, you climb some stairs and take a big slide back down to the bottom. My first time around I was able to stay mostly up, but my second time I fell down (though I was able to get up before the top). It's a lot harder than it looks, and the majority of people can't stay standing. I'm sure the beer doesn't help.
I, of course, couldn't resist taking a picture of this.
And back to Hacker-Pschorr we went!
That's Mike in the lederhosen, BTW. Aaron and I sat at a table with a huge group of people from Australia who were on a month long tour of Europe (or was it 6 weeks? I don't remember).
The girl in the later 3 pictures is Sarah who we spent the most time talking to. They were all cool though.
The festivities ends around 10, and this was us getting ready to leave. They opened the doors to the inside of the tent, so I had to run and take a picture. I also purchased a liter glass as a memento.
Getting home proved to be quite difficult. Our hotel was several miles away, and there was not nearly enough taxis. Several were parked but "reserved." We also didn't know exactly where it was. We knew the name, but that's about it. We walked a ways away from the fest and jumped into a taxi on its way to the fest after about 20 minutes. He had never heard of our hotel, but we had 3 geeks in the car. I looked it up on my phone, and gave him an address. Shortly thereafter we were at our hotel. We hung out for a bit at the hotel bar, and then turned in.
The next morning the bus picked us up around 10:30am for our 11 o'clock breakfast reservations at a nice nearby restaurant. Breakfast was odd. Getting coffee was surprisingly difficult. When we made reservations they gave us a set menu of 5 things and made is order in advance because our party (of about 15) was so big. Well, there was another party there of about 10 that just showed up and had a full choice of the menu. To make matters worse, when there was confusion about the orders, a plate came out no one had ordered and Mike, being the only one without food, took it when they told us that the kitchen wouldn't make us anything else. Needless to say, the service was quite poor. Of course, it's Europe, so there's minimal tipping anyway, so not much you can do about it.
Post breakfast, the group split into a few subgroups. Some were going shopping, others sight-seeing, others other places. Emmanuel had talked about going to a pedestrian area, and that sounded good to me, so a group of us walked with him.
We passed a fortress looking building made of rock with a hidden door cut into it that had an electronic lock. We walked around it until we finally found the real doors.
Clearly a synagogue. A closed one, though. Once we got to the main square, Emmanuel split off from the rest of us to go do shopping on his own, so the rest of us headed off to walk around. We ended up getting split into two groups when half of our group followed me into a crowd and the other half didn't. But I walked into this crowd to take some pictures and as I did I heard an American voice yelling "If you are here for the free Munich tour, follow the sound of my voice!" I looked at my companions and we all seemed to be thinking "yes!" so off we went. Two girls - one clearly American and the other presumably German gave a short intro and explained that the glockenspiel behind them was not going to go off at 1pm, much to the disappointment of the large crowd around us. 1pm is not one of its hours. Instead the two girls acted out the scene for us. They also explained we were standing at the exact center of Munich - or rather right next to the pole that was the exact center of Munich. They then led us into the quiet courtyard of the new town hall, the building housing said glockenspiel.
As it turned out, there was 34 of us, and two guides. They split us into two groups of 17, and we were in Christi's group. Christi was the American, for what it's worth. Christi led us off to a quite corner where she went through a brief history of Munich. She pointed out this monk dude, who had a lot of significance I no longer remember and is apparently all over Munich.
We then headed out for the tour and lost about half of the group in the crowd. Down a narrow street we found ourselves in front of a church with a great story.
OK, so the short version of this story. The church (Frauenkirche) is getting built very slowly. The Devil comes to earth and gets annoyed at yet another church. He goes inside and sees no windows. He likes this - he thinks this might be a good way to lure people over to the dark side. He offers the architect to get the resources he needs to finish the church if he promises not to add another window. The architect agrees, and the Devil vanishes. When the Devil returns he enters the church through a side door and there's windows everywhere! He's furious and finds the architect. The architect tells him he never added a single window from when the Devil originally saw the church and tells him to walk in the front door. He walks in the front door and realizes you can't see any of the windows from the front because they're blocked by rows of columns. He's so angry at being tricked that he stomps his foot and leaves a shoe-print in the concrete. See for yourself.
The last picture there shows one of only two differences between the two towers. The right one has a white brick. The other difference is that one is about a half-meter shorter than the other. There's significance to the white brick, but I don't remember what it is. Yeah, I suck.
Next we come along a map of the city for the blind. That's the theory anyway. It's pretty useful for sighted people as well.
We then returned to the pole in the exact center of the city on our way to the "old town hall" which is newer than the new town hall due to being rebuilt. There's an interesting story about it that I don't remember, the statues guard it, etc. You'll see a horrible picture of our actually very attractive tour guide below. Sorry Christi.
We walk around, and Christi tells us lots about the history of Munich, a boatload of interesting Hitler stories, etc.
We come across the synagogue that we had passed earlier this morning before the tour. As it turns out there was supposed to be a holocaust memorial in the courtyard. However, a few days before the synagogue was to open, the police uncovered a plot to blow it up on it's opening day by neo-Nazis. As such the memorial was placed in an underground tunnel between the synagogue and the museum next door to prevent it getting vandalized. Other last-minute changes were also made, and there is often an armed gaurd on duty in front of the synagogue when it's open. To see the memorial you must make an appointment 24 hours in advance and they do a background check on you.
We then stopped for a break at a nearby market. There was a God-awful motorcycle parked there. It was covered in fur. Yeesh.
More fountains and prettiness.
Sadly I didn't take any pictures of the Royal Brewery. This place was built for royalty and their friends - although was later mostly occupied by members of the Third Reich. Before that, however, it got very popular. Royalty invited their friends. Their friends invited more friends. And over time pretty much everyone could come. Everyone except women, of course. There was one problem: the place was built without bathrooms. Well, with only men as occupants it wasn't an issue to run outside and take a leak in the streets. But as the place got more and more crowded this became a problem as you might lose your seat - or your beer! So they installed troughs in the floor below the benches that lead outside. Thus, you could undo your lederhosen and piss under the table without getting up.
Our astute tour guide quickly noted that the men in the group must be thinking "what about, eh, splash?" Indeed men would use their walking sticks to guide the stream down and prevent splashing on their friends. In the evenings the beer wenches would fill the empty beer barrels with water and wash down the floors, and hence it got the name "the washroom" (except, in German). As you can see, Christi rocked.
The place is now open to the public - including women - and there are bathrooms. It is now illegal to pee - or puke - on the floor of the royal brewery. The men's room even has a vomitorium!
We came to a square with a statue and a famous opera house.
Some prince built the opera house which had an inside-out dome at the top to hold rain water which was hooked up to a sprinkler system in case there was a fire. One day there was a fire and they turned on the sprinkler system. However, it was winter and the water was frozen. With no source for water, the prince ran down the street to the royal brewery and they built a human chain between the brewery and the opera house passing beer down between them to put out the fire. This, unsurprisingly, didn't work well and the opera house burned down. The prince raised the price of beer by 1 penny - to 6 cents - and used the money to rebuild the opera house.
This worked so well he decided to raise it another penny. This led to Munich's first beer revolt. I say first, because there were two. Gotta love Bavaria!
Note the facade on the building with the prince and princess looking out.
Next is a gold path in the ground that represents the shortcut Jews would take to avoid Nazi guards at one of the squares.
Hitler gave may of his first speeches between these two lions. The lions are identical in all ways except for the one facing the government has it's mouth open and the once facing the church has it's mouth closed. This represents the belief that it's OK to speak out against your government but not to do so against the church. The irony of Hitler giving speeches here is amazing.
Some final pictures...
Oktoberfest is insane! It's definitely a lot of fun, although I think one (maybe two) days is plenty. I can't imagine being there for 16 days, but I highly recommend checking it out!
Munich is an amazingly beautiful city. It's rich with culture and I'm sorry I only had about 4 hours to see it. I'll definitely be back. Thanks to Christi for the awesome tour!