Day 9, Monday 09.22.08

Today's the day. The big day. The day we hit "Therese's Meadow" and see the sights of Oktoberfest.

And it rained.

And rained.

And rained.

Our pants were soaked. Our rain jackets were barely keeping the water out. And the umbrella just wasn't doing much good anymore.

6 million people come to Oktoberfest over its 16 days. 6 million. The one good thing about the rain is that the midway and the concourse was relatively spacious enough to move around. Pictures of previous years all you see is a wall of humanity shoulder-to-shoulder with no room to move. Plenty of room here.

Until you get inside the tents.

And when we say "tents" it's not carnival canvas tents. These are massive structures designed to hold thousands of people in one sitting. Thousands. Words cannot truly describe these tents and the work that goes into them. It's incredible. And they are constructed and taken down each and every year. Unreal. The sheer magnitude of it all is really overwhelming. No need to describe it, just look at the photos:

Unreal.

Afterward, we hit up a wine store so Kimberly can bring back some eiswein, "ice wine". A super sweet dessert wine where the grapes need to experience the first frost and be pressed while frozen. Makes for a teeth-hurting sweet wine that is consumed in small, small quantities. Our fantastic waiter at the hotel, Stefan, gave us tips on where to find it. He most assuredly did not steer us wrong.

Finally, dinner back at the hotel to show off our bounty to Stefan. Oktoberfest in Munich is truly something to behold, even if pictures and not words tell the story.

Prost!