#BeerSaturday – A whirlwind trip to Munich Oktoberfest weekend | Adventure Every Day

What the #&$!

I’m taking a quick aside from my Norwegian road trip adventures to provide a real-time update from this brief side trip to Munich. What better place to get active in the #BeerSaturday challenge hosted by @detlev and one of my fav Steemians @buzzbeergeek??

My uncle informed me at Christmas last year that he and my aunt had a trip planned. My uncle shall affectionately be called the Godfather the rest of the post, as that’s what he is to me.

I’d forgotten all about the trip until the Godfather sent a text a few weeks back to invite me.

Sounds awesome! I replied. Just had to figure out how to get there and still have some money left for a beer.

I really couldn’t turn this trip down – I’ve never really gotten to hang out with the Godfather. You see, the Völmecke clan are like ants on the Western Hills of Cincinnati, Ohio, but I was one of the few relegated to growing up across the state in Akron.

Nothing wrong with that – I love Akron to death – but the consequence of it is that I never was really able to bond with my dad’s insanely large, largely Cincinnati-based family. One of my life goals is to fix this, one at a time.

So I had to make this happen one way or another. But the flights were insanely expensive. Who’d have guessed I wasn’t the only one who wanted to get to Munich this weekend??

The weeks passed, and I was still sitting on my hands, searching flights over and over.

Wednesday night, the light bulb went off. I forgot about my stash of rewards points that I got from making a deal with the devil (thank you Chase Bank, you beautiful bastard you!).

20k dropped (points, that is) and I had my flight there Friday night!

The flight plan

One problem with flying for me is that I have seriously horrible luck with it working the way it should.

Like, there was that time I had to spend the night at the Atlanta airport. Or the Newark airport. Or that time that was totally my fault but I almost missed Christmas. Or that time I got thrown the %$@! off a United Airlines flight.

Just to name a few.

If you’ve even happened to be on the same flight as me, I’m very sorry, because I’m sure that flight was delayed and I was to blame for somehow angering the flight gods. Sorry!

Anywho, the only concern here was a tight layover in Copenhagen following the flight down from Oslo. First flight OSL-CPH was minimally delayed, so good start.

Good job SAS.

Check the board in CPH…delayed. Of course!

Bad job SAS.

No worries, needed some dinner anyways. Quick stroll to the end of the B terminal and what to my wandering eyes but a Priority Pass lounge. Free dinner! (Thanks Chase bank, you dirty devil you!)

Nevermind that it was boring Scandinavian food – bread with cheese and deli meat – it was food, free, and I was hungry. And they had probably the coolest cheese slicer I’ve ever seen. Check this thing out. It spins like a screw as it cuts slices of cheese off the top of the blocks. Genius!

Scandinavia’s cheese slicer game is on point.

Scooped up a much-needed first beer as well. Not worthy of posting a boring Carlsberg, but free is free. If you travel at airports a lot, consider getting a Priority Pass card, I do recommend it.

Okay enough of that, time to sprint back to the gate. Delay on delay, but we finally board around 20:30.

20:35 – Pilot announces further delay due to “waiting on Air Traffic Control to arrive” or something like that. That’s a new one. Did ATC just say &$@! It and take off for the night?!?

20:57 – Still waiting to push back, plane is blazing hot. Flight attendant informs that AC cannot turn on until engines start. Hmm….I think I know a solution to both problems!

21:03 – Push back finally and start making way to runway.

21:16 – Still driving in circles on the tarmac.

*21:17 – Takeoff at last.

Okay I probably shouldn’t complain so much, but the Godfather and co are waiting for me at an Airbnb that’s apparently over 1.5 hours by S-bahn from the airport, and they’ve been Oktoberfesting all day, so I know the drunken exhaustion is setting in fast.

Maybe Uber has a faster option? Yeah…if you want to pay €137. Oktoberfest weekend – go figure.

S-bahn it is.

A hard night’s rest

Somewhere along the journey I received word that an administrative error in the planning committee meant that the apartment was a wee bit smaller than anticipated.

This translated to my bed being less of bed and more like a group of pillows on the floor:

This doesn’t bother me – I spent last weekend voluntarily sleeping on the ground in the woods in Norway, plus it adds to the adventure – but it did equate to not the most restful night ever.

No matter though, I’m not here to sleep!

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Here for the beer (but mostly the family)

Given the events of the previous day, I knew my new-found posse wouldn’t be up for going all out two days in a row.

Although I had a modest goal of consuming at least one beer for #BeerSaturday, my main motivation as mentioned was the camaraderie of hanging out with the fam. Anything more was a bonus.

Luckily, a noon deadline for return of some rented Oktoberfest gear – lederhosen and dirndls of course – forced us to an early start.

The day would mostly be spent being tourists around Marienplatz, looking at the Glockenspiel and the other interesting historical buildings. We also climbed the towers of Peterskirche (St. Peter’s church), where I bravely held my phone out through the railing to capture some panorama:

A fun fact we learned about this church is that, following heavy damage sustained during WWII, Munich’s sister city of – you guessed it - Cincinnati, OH supported the rebuild with funding. Or at least I’m pretty sure that’s what this sign meant:

Following the tour, the Godfather came up with a great suggestion: Hofbräuhaus.

We have a Hofbräuhaus in the Cincinnati area, but how cool would it be to experience one in actual Germany as I pick the Godfather’s brain about our family’s German heritage?

I’m sure most of you are familiar with the Hofbräuhaus, but in case you aren’t, these are large, open halls with long rows of bench seating/picnic tables designed for large, rowdy crowds to mingle, drink beer out of massive 1L steins, and consume heavy, delicious German food. A brass band periodically chimes in to ensure the crowd stays rowdy and energetic at all times. A constant undertone in the crowd periodically breaks out into an all-out chant or chorus of some catchy song.

Basically, it’s the perfect and most quintessentially German drinking environment.

So I was more than happy to quench my thirst with a couple Hofbräu Originals and a boiled pork knuckle with sauerkraut and horseradish. Pictures are fuzzy, much like the state of one's mind at Hofbräuhaus:

A Mind like a trap

My dad has always talked up how knowledgeable the Godfather is and how he can rattle off facts, dates, scores, etc. on demand.

I thought I'd test with a question I knew the answer to: Who caught the final out in the Cincinnati Reds 1990 World Series victory over the Oakland A's? Without the slightest pause:

First baseman Todd Benzinger. I can tell you who it was when they won in '75 too. Cesar Geronimo. In '76, it didn't matter because they whooped the Yankees so bad.

Test passed.

From there, I wanted to learn some more family heritage, and some fantastic stories were uncovered to me.

Like that time in 1843 when my great-great grandfather Franz Eberhard left Hallenberg, Germany and ended up in Cincinnati. Or how my great grandfather Carl Sr. used to buy a pint of beer on the way home from work every day. Or that time in 1942 when my grandfather Carl Jr. dropped out of high school after his junior year as valedictorian when my great-grandfather suffered a stroke, in order to go to work to support his mother and younger siblings. Or the great worker's union audit standoff of '52 where my grandfather took on the union boss and uncovered thousands in hidden money but was subsequently forced out of the union.

But those are stories for another day.

Now, it's time to get back to Norway. And this is already turning into an adventure of itself for tomorrow's post...