Oktoberfest Parade & Fest in Munich, Sunday

Wow, I drank a lot of beer yesterday...let's see, 4 liters is about 135 ounces, so say the equivalent of about 11 bottles. But it was only 4 glasses....4 really big glasses. However, I feel fine today -- maybe German beer doesn't have the same side effects!

Here's a video greeting:

If you want to see all 197 pictures that I took yesterday you should go here:

Oktoberfest: 2007-09-23

Otherwise I'll try to highlight below...

The morning began at 7:00, with a quick breakfast & bus trip to the staging area for the parade. Can you guess from the picture below who's marching and who's not?

The Chico Bavarians were staged about 1/3 of the way back from the front, and were lining up with a collection of other participants. Here's the Paulaner wagon horses getting frisky with each other:

Finally about 9:30 the parade started; here's the Bavarians marching up Maximillianstrasse:

Our plan (Jan's plan really) was to run ahead of the Bavarians as they marched across Munich, from east to west, darting to subway stations and coming up ahead of them. After studying the route we figured we could catch them at Maximillianstrasse, jump into the Lehel U-bahn, come up in Odeonplatz & see them coming and going around the main stand, drop down again at Odeonplatz and come up at Karlsplatz, see them go by, then catch the U-bahn to Theresienwiese where they would arrive at the festival grounds and march into the Spaten tent. Shockingly, the plan worked brilliantly! Here we are running out of the Odeonsplatz station:

This is the parade in Odeonsplatz, with the Chico Bavarians far ahead (the little blue Spaten flags):

Here's the band passing by...you can see Bob in the front:

The crowds were pretty heavy; this parade is a big deal. The people around us couldn't believe that our band was from California! Here's Kristey trying for a better shot with her husband Jim's help; her son Adam's in the foreground:

This is just a sample of the crowd along the entire parade route...

Here come the Bavarians again; I was hanging on the side of a building, grabbing a rain gutter & shooting with one hand to get above the crowd. Fortunately I hadn't been drinking yet & got a few good shots...

This is the band passing through Karlsplatz:

When Bob told us to meet them at the Spaten tent, I envisioned a small affair, sort of like you'd set up for an outdoor wedding or something. Instead, this is the Spaten "tent":

After all the running around in Munich's subway system it was very nice to sit down & have a little beer...
Here's Adam, Andrew, me & Steve toasting to the parade; Adam, who is 16, clearly is too young to have a beer. In a picture, anyway...

Each of us got a voucher from Spaten for a beer & 1/2 chicken. Here's Erica with her chicken (which was, in fact, very good despite her approach to eating it):

The beermaiden below is carrying six liters in one hand; normally they carry 12 (6 in each hand). That's what...(carry the 1...) 400 ounces of beer? Yikes!

Here we've started the serious part of the festival; Steve, Steven, Andrew, Jim & Bob are toasting to something or other. The size of the feather in the cap is proportional to some anatomical feature; I'm not sure what...

I took a lot more pictures after this one but for some reason they weren't very well composed. I also have some videos that I'll upload to YouTube & post later.

Cheers!