Guten tag to Oktoberfest Munich & to Europe's Premier Beer Festival! 17 days, 6.5 million litres of beer, nearly 7 million visitors. If you do the maths you'll see that this year, 2011, is the 201st year since it all began. During that time, the event has only been cancelled 24 times. The Bavarian beer is brewed especially for Oktoberfest and has no perservatives, the word on the street is that you do not get hangovers from it but I can well and truely confirm that this is an outright LIE!

Tim McFarlane aka Sameseed joined me on this momentous occassion and we departed London around lunch time on a full bus with the tour company PP Travel. 16 hours on a bus, oh the joys of busing through Europe, especially when the toilet on the bus fills up and people keep releiving themselves in it.. nek minute urine sloshing all over the floor.. as you can imagine it smelled delicious. Which lead to the toilet being banned and no toilet stops for the next four hours, which created PP Travels new slogan "No wee wee on PP".

We arrived in Munich early in the morning and had a wee nana nap in the luxurious damp falling down tent - 5 star accommodation. Feeling slightly refreshed got a on bus and headed to the renowed world famous in Munich "Hundy Club" which is where a group of Aussie's & Kiwi's that enter have to do a shot a minute, if you spew you're out of the competition.

As we walked over the camping ground to where this legendary event takes place, the air was thick with anticipation. This is where I first set eyes on some of the competitors, boys with randomly shaved bits, in there jocks, or nude, making themselves spew in a big puddle then rolling in it. This set the scence for the upcoming events, which was all class of course. All the competitors sat around in a big circle, with a big bucket of beer infront of them - you could place a bet on who you thought would win for 1 euro, I chose a blonde curly headed f*** with a sparkly silver hat and ripped underpants. The judges were a mixture of past competitors including the winner from last year, and organisers new and old.

The action started off with the competitor that won it last year "Murph" throwing flour in there faces and into there buckets of beer, which made it a lovely appetizing clumpy texture. Shoving butter in there mouths, making them beer bong all sorts of heavenly treats mixed in with the beer, such as rotten milk, hot chilli sauce, and adding in some delightful culinary delights - such as cat food, jellied eels, sardines and eggs. Over the duration of this extremely elegant competition it got steadily more feral, now the beer bong was getting some bodily additives from other competitors and judges alike, urine snot, and spew. If you did not finish the bong or you spewed you were out - a bonus was if you told them you were going to spew and they caught it in the beer bong, then you drunk it you could stay in the game. I have never witnessed anything like it before, Sameseed compared it to days on Lake Te Anau playing the "dig a hole" game but this did not even come close although I suspect some of the boys would do very well participating in this. On the bright side up until last year the rules was that there are no rules, and this year they enforced a new rule that no blood or pooooos was allowed in the beer bongs, as too many competitors were contracting hepatitis. What a proud tradition to uphold - good old aussie and kiwis aye! Although it was very entertaining and a great day, a guy with a shaved head on my tour got a c*** spraypainted on his head and got sunburnt, equalling in a not so appropriate tan mark.

The first day of Oktoberfest was greeted with rain, I was decked out in a traditional german Dirndl costume (or better known as a beer wench kit). As the first beer did not get served till 12pm once the Mayor of Munich had tapped the keg everyone was extremely thirsty. It transformed into a beautiful sunny day, and because the HUGE Lowenbrau beer hall (1 of 13 gigantic beer halls) was full to capicity inside we were outside in the beer tables soaking up some vitamin D. The steins were 1 litre in size and at no less than 5% alcohol content it packed a mighty punch. It was not like a normal pub/beer hall - you could only be served if you were seated and handed a stein by the german beer wenchs, in my opinion I think NZ should adopt this service. The story goes that each section of a beer hall gets passed down throughout generations to the next capable and willing female - this would be quite the lucrative month, as steins were 9 euro and you had to tip the ladys so that they kept on coming back and serving you. It could be a very long wait otherwise - we were giving our beer wench 10 euro notes and as soon as you got down to a quarter her crazy german eagle eye seeked it out and she was right there offering more beer - one word.. dangerous!

Was an amazing day drinking in the sun in Munich until there was a torrential downpour at the end of the day which pretty much continued for the entire time after that, camping + non stop rain + flooding tents = WET EVERYTHING! I literally had not 1 item of dry clothing/posessions. Did some other wee adventures whilst in Munich - a day trip to Austria where it was snowing - the 1st time in 600 years that it has snowed that early in the year to ground level. It was very beautiful strolling around Austria with white fluffy snowflakes floating through the air, although with all my clothes already wet it was not the warmest day I have ever experienced. Thanks to Tim I wore his big thick grey woollen farm socks under my sandals as my shoes were soaked, maybe it will start a hot new fashion trend in Europe, hitting NZ stores next season - be prepared!

Am hoping to return next year as it was great to experience it, will most definetly be investing in hostel accommodation as I dont think I can bring myself to go camping for a few years after that! Chomped my way through some crazy german food, bratwurst sausage, cinnamon and vanilla coated almonds, yagi (which, no joke was what they used to use for cough medicine) along with all the beautiful beir. Farewell to Munich, until next year my friend I have my stein that I stole to reminisce and hopefully get some practice in! Auf wiedersehen xx