When planning my weekend away to Oktoberfest, I could not wait to indulge in all of the local delicacies. When I stepped off the train and met my friend Leshae, first thing was first...LUNCH. We wandered down to central Munich to Augustiner-Bräu, which is Munich’s oldest brewery. I perused the menu and decided on the classic Frankfurters with French Fries and one of their famed beers, or as the Germans call it a wiener würstl mit pommes frites and a Maß (pronounced mass). Instead of putting a basket of baguette on the table, naturally in Germany they provide pretzels and mustard! After a good feed and meeting our friend Tobias, off we went in search of dirndls for the weekends festivities.
5:30 the next morning, the alarm was swooning so we could get a kick start to the day. By the time we arrived at the Oktoberfest grounds at 8:00am, there were hundreds of thousands of people already beating us to the punch, lederhosen and dirndls in every direction. We chose a table in the Schützenzelt tent and watched in awe as the tent came to life; singing and cheering, cheersing and eating! Servers zigzagged through the tables delivering litres of beer and selling pretzels (bigger than the size of my head) with Obazter (Bavarian cream cheese), matjesbrötchen (herring and raw onion in a bread roll), Mettbrötchen (raw ground pork on a bread roll), pickles, bratwurst, Wiesn Hendl (the infamous roast chicken), boiled potatoes, apple strudel...the list goes on. Day 1, I played it safe, no raw fish or pork for me, instead I opted out for the Wiesn Handl, a plump, slow roasted half chicken with crispy skin that is lathered in butter accompanied with boiled potatoes. Why does everything thing bathed in butter taste so good, yet is so bad for the waste line?! At least here in France, the more butter the better, so I brought that mentality to Germany with me! The chicken was cooked to perfection, so juicy and the skin so crisp...no wonder over half a million roast chickens were devoured at Oktoberfest last year!
I was super excited for Day 2. We decided that we were going to take it easy on the Maß’ and simply eat our way through the day. First stop the Lebkuchenherz stand for the heart shaped gingerbread cookies (Lebkuchen = gingerbread, herz = heart). Though we were not going to eat them, we didn’t wear our dirndls this day, so we wanted to get festive. Then on to the Marstall biergarten to meet Sean and Julia to graze the afternoon away. We chose everything from bratwurst with sauerkraut and potatoes with freshly grated wasabi to schweinhaxe (which is roasted pork knuckle and came highly recommended by my good friend Carlos...great recommendation by the way, danke!), more roast chicken and Klöße, which are German style dumplings. Who knew that German’s were so crazy for dumplings?! We sampled every flavour of dumpling under the sun –pork, potato, pumpkin, pesto, even a dumpling soup to warm up and apple and almond dumplings for a sweet, sweet finish. Too bad there wasn’t enough room for the wheat beer tiramisu!
On our way through the fairgrounds to the rollercoasters and rides, we stopped for chocolate covered banana kabobs, Flammkuchen (German-style pizza) and hazelnut schnapps. Despite people thinking that Oktoberfest is just a crazy beer free-for-all, it is so much more when you can dive right into the heart of Bavarian cuisine. However with that said, I think I am all sausage and sauerkrauted out for the time being and maybe I should think about going for a run!