Janet and our friend Larry (visiting from San Francisco)

Me with my first beer of the day…

Interior shot of Löwenbräu Festzelt

Tina and Martin from my office

Johann with his first Mass

Though many people didn’t understand that the whole balcony is a reserved section, proof of our reservation…

Stefan, Jeremy (another San Francisco friend) and Johann

The same gang as before…

Franz, a co-worker on his first Mass

Interior shot of the festhalle

Me, still on my first mass…

Thomas, Janet and Stephan (a little blurry)

Franz and Barbara

Tina and Amanda

Janet and Stephan

Stephan and the lion hat…

And again with the hat…

Another shot of the hall…

Christiane, Stefan’s wife

The San Francisco duo of Larry and Jeremy

Barbara, Franz, Me, Stephan and Tina

Me

Janet and Me

Larry, Jeremy, Stephan

Christiane

One of the two tables

The tables

The picture Janet doesn’t want to have online

A dancing Australian

Amanda and Martin

Stefan, Christiane, Amanda

Stephan

The random Austrian and Katya

Martin and Birgit

Larry, Jeremy and Me

Trumpeter

Martin and Birgit (with Katya in the background

Stephan and Stefan

Stephan and Löwen

Random sleeping person

The fest at night

The fest at night

So, for my Birthday, we all ended up going to the Löwenbräu festzelt… as you can see, it was a great turnout and even aside from a bunch of arrogant drunken argumentative Brits that were itching to pick a fight with our table, it was an excellent way to ring in the beginning of my fourth decade.
Eventually, there will be captions for most of the pictures. For now, you’ll just have to be satisfied with everything just randomly put on the site.

Today, we went back to the Wies’n, the site of the Oktoberfest, with the goal of actually being able to sit in one of the tents. The site opened at 9am, and we arrived shortly after. By 9:30, we were enjoying our first beers at Ochsenbraterei, one of Spaten’s tent. As you can see in the pictures, the site was empty at 9, and was packed by 11. Around 2pm, we wandered over to Augustiner to see the tent (and we remarkably were even able to get a seat and have a beer!)… then afterwards spent the next few hours bouncing in and out of Hacker, Paulaner and Schutzen-Festzelte just to see the crowds and hear the bands.

Two days down, 14 days to go. Oh, my aching liver!

— Avery

The Parade of the Brewers, marking the beginning of Oktoberfest.

Sitting at the Löwenbräu beer garden. It was so crowded that we could not sit with Martin and Birgit, our hosts for the day. You can still see Martin in the last picture. Instead, we ended up with some Ozzies and Kiwis.

Löwenbrau interior and Ochsenbraterei interior…

More pics tomorrow…