Oktoberfest in Munich – in short, it’s a magical place full of all the beer, pork knuckles and cleavage you can handle.
Standing up and putting your foot on the table signals to the thousands of people in the tent that you are an absolute attention seeker and prepared to down your entire stein in front of them. This tradition is the primary entertainment for the first few hours of the day when everyone is still sober enough to have an attention span. If you’re successful, you will be rewarded with the entire tent cheering for you like you are the biggest legend since the inventor of sliced bread. HOWEVER, if you fail you will be faced with 5000-8000 spectators mercilessly booing you and yelling horrible things that you can’t hear because it’s too loud from the booing (and chucking scrunched up pieces of paper at you).
So standing up in front of a drunken international crowd knowing full well that I wasn’t going to be able to down an entire litre of beer was by no means easy…
But with the full support and peer pressure of my crew, I stood up at our table – um wearing a bib – and tried to poor the fizzy cold liquid down my throat at full speed. After first not succeeding, I decided to try, try again.
I downed a beer stein at Oktoberfest.
