Author: Chris

Just a short post about our stay in Rosenheim last night.

We had one more of the local beers to try, so I walked into Gasthof Flötzinger… Merideth was shopping next door and would join me momentarily.

As we have talked about before, when choosing a table at a German beer hall, you need to be cognizant of the Stammtisch table. If you sit there, the staff will ask you to move and it is somewhat embarrassing.

So last evening, I walked into Gasthof Flötzinger all by my lonesome and after quickly scanning the room, I chose a nondescript table in the corner… definitely not the Stammtisch.

But once I sat down, the waiter came over to inform me that the table that I sat at was the Stammtisch table and asked me to move to the next table.

Merideth joined me and I told her my little tale. Then she noticed that we were sitting at the Stammtisch table now. So, of course, we had to take a picture.

The funny thing was that when locals would come in they stare at us like WTF? Why are they sitting there? Plus, this old lady gave me the stink eye most of the time we were there.

In the end, I decided the staff knew who I was and deemed me special enough to sit at the Stammtisch table.

The Year in Beer wouldn’t be the Year in Beer without attending the ultimate of all beer festivals: Oktoberfest.

This will be our second time attending Munich’s annual celebration of Crown Prince Ludwig’s marriage to Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. We were rookies back in 2005; a little scared… a little reticent… a little intimidated.

But we had a great time and couldn’t wait to go return to the Theresienwiese and its beer filled tents.

But before reaching Munich, we are returning to  Berchtesgaden to get “match fit” and conquer the Eagle’s Nest.

When we visited the Obersalzberg this past December, we learned you could hike up to Hitler’s mountain top retreat. It being December and a bit chilly, we decided to put the ascent off until our Oktoberfest trip. From what we can gather, it is a two to three hour hike from the Obersalzberg. Hopefully, there will be a hut along the way.

After a few days of charging our batteries in the Bavarian Alps, it will be time to go to Munich and face the multitude of other international beer travelers and liters of beer.

Now that we are Oktoberfest veterans, the goal of this year’s trip will be to show you, our faithful viewer, how to negotiate the world’s largest festival. How to find a seat… how to get a beer… how to make friends. Hopefully, we will do all those things so we can show it.

We are at Oktoberfest opening weekend and some of the highlights will include…

• Two parades: the Grand Entry of the Oktoberfest Landlords and Breweries on Saturday and the Oktoberfest Costume and Riflemen’s Parade on Sunday.
• Dragging some German friends, including Ute from floggingmolly.de, to Oktoberfest.
• Merideth repeating her Bergkirchweih performance,  by risking the potentially puke-inducing carnival rides again.
• Many litres of Oktoberfest beer… many pretzels… many new friends.

Unfortunately, I doubt we will get to see the magical “O’zapft is!” moment at the Schottenhamel. This is where the mayor of Munich gets to tap the first keg, officially opening Oktoberfest.

On Monday, we are going to take a break from Oktoberfest and spend a day visiting some hop farms north of Munich.  We will be guided by Willy Buholzer, the General Manager of Busch Farm Huell, the Bavarian hop farm owned by Anheuser-Busch.

If we survive Oktoberfest, we are spending our last day in Germany with Ute and Wolfgang in Mannheim. No better way to finish up the Year in Beer in Germany than with our good friends at the Zentrale.