Before we get stuck into the main course of this blog I would like to begin with a starter before the main course, if you will…

The Starter:

Friday 2nd Sept 2011:

It was a gorgeous summers day, very hot actually, one of the few hot days of the year.  To celebrate the weather I found myself sitting inside a pub on my own (The Queens Arms if you must know).  I was awaiting the arrival of one Jimmy Jazzgood as it was the day after his birthday, it’s not cool to celebrate birthdays anymore, it’s far cooler to celebrate the day after the birthday rather than the birthday itself.  Anyway Me, Jazzgood, Dave and Nick were heading to the centre of all things debauched, Reading Berkshire, to celebrate the aforementioned day after the birthday.  Once everyone turned up we had a swift pint before catching a train.  Don’t worry I’m not going to describe everything that happened that night as to be honest I don’t think anything particularly different happened to elevate it to full blog status.

However one thing did happen that night that will haunt me until the end of my days…We were sitting on the train as you do having a pleasant almost mature conversation, well two separate conversations actually.  Dave and Nick were having a conversation about their respective newly born children whilst me and Jimmy Jazzgood were having a moderately mature conversation about future holidays to go on.  It was all very civilised, none of us were drunk, we’d had a pint each before we got on the train (I’d had two, because I’m super tough).  Anyway whilst chatting I couldn’t help but notice out the corner of my eye that a chubby woman, probably in her early 50’s was staring at us.  To be honest I just thought she fancied me, I mean she’s female and she’s only human, of course she’s going to fall for my charms.  So I thought nothing more of it.

As we approached Mortimer she stood up walked over to us, leaned over and said “I hope you’re proud of yourselves”, then walked away.  She walked towards the doors and tapped a completely innocent man who was also getting off the train on his shoulder.  He turned around, she pointed at us and said rather loudly “Those little f**king idiots are going to Reading”. 

Well, we were in a state of shock, why on earth had this woman decided to hurl abuse at us?  Where had this foul mouthed tirade come from?  A few things have bothered me about what this woman had said.  Firstly apart from Jim, none of us are particularly little, certainly bigger than her and secondly I don’t like the idea of a stranger calling me a “f**king idiot”.  At no point during that journey did she challenge me to any sort of general knowledge quiz.  Trivial pursuit, Who wants to be a Millionaire or even Eggheads (if there’s such a boardgame) I would’ve happily played against and most probably destroyed her.

I have also started to wonder if maybe she has been sent back from the future to give us a message, Terminator-esque.  Maybe her quote “I hope you’re proud of yourselves” is a warning against something which all four of us do in the future which brings planet Earth to it’s knees.  I don’t know, but it’s worth thinking about…However just in case she is reading this I’d like to say to her “No, I’m not actually”.

So for future reference if anybody gets a train from Basingstoke to Reading and a small chubby woman in her early 50’s/late 40’s possibly drunk, possibly on drugs, possibly a gypsy starts staring at you and starts mumbling under her breath I suggest you hide in the toilet until the train has departed Mortimer station…

The Main Course:

The following takes place between Thurs 15th Sept and Mon 19th Sept 2011:

5pm I set foot from my house into town, at 5:30pm I was rendezvousing with the other members of our ragtag posse.  The aim of this trip was to spend a weekend in Munich, in particular at Oktoberfest.  Our posse consisted of yours truly, Piotr J, Kelvin and Quentin.  There is a small chance some of these names have been changed to protect the innocent (or not so innocent as the case may be).  We met in BCOT car park and Quentin exclaimed to everyone (in English, but with a Polish accent, you wouldn’t think he was Polish with a name like that would you?) “I’m early!”.  Sadly he was early, but only because he had forgotten to pack his yellow high visiblity vest, so he trundled back home to get it.

At this point I need to point out that this trip was about to become a logistical nightmare.  The aim of our game was to drive from Basingstoke on Thursday night to arrive in Munich Friday morning, then spend two days partying before driving back Sunday to be back in Basingstoke in the early hours of Monday…Now that is crazy.

So we set off, little did we know we would be spending the next 15 hrs travelling and lest we forget travelling in the very spritely if slightly incommodious Vauxhall Agila owned by Kelvin.  We nearly made a schoolboy error in mistaking the Channel Tunnel for a ferry but apart from that it was all pretty much plain sailing getting to France (pun intended).  We did see one of the coolest cars ever whilst queuing up for the ferry, it was believe it or not a car covered head to toe or rather bonnet to boot in pink leopard skin Velvet carpet.  Of course I know you don’t get pink leopards with skin made from Velvet, but this car was definitely made of that very material.  I have to say I can’t actually remember what model of car it was, I think it may have been some form of BMW but I’m not too sure.  Well whatever it was it resembled a Pimp Mobile of the highest order, it looked a classy drive.

Our ferry docked in France at 23:35 French time, and this is when the Aguila would come into it’s own.  We effectively spent the next 10hrs in the Aguila, there isn’t really much to tell, so I can easily whittle this part down.  Piotr and Quentin fell asleep in the back, whilst Kelvin and myself assumed driving duties.  Kelvin drove for as long as he could before he got too tired, then I took over.  I think I did a respectable 250 ish miles which took me into the early hours of Friday morning just as the sun was coming up.  One thing we did notice is there are a hell of a lot of toll roads in France and they’re very expensive and pop up incessantly.  Anyway, we negiociated an expensive France with ease before crossing the border into Germany, this was when I decided to hang up my driving gloves as my eyes were getting tired and I did come off the motorway a bit too fast and then underestimate the angle of the bend, thus nearly careering off the road into a hedge.  Luckily my Formula 1 style drivers instincts kicked in and I managed to compose myself, control the car, before getting out and swapping seats with Kelvin.

We arrived at our Hostel on the outskirts of Munich at around 10am (I had now been awake for 22hrs).  We were staying at the hostel Pension Carl which we later found out was 1 bus and 1 train ride away from the city centre.  The location may have been a bit further away from the action than we would’ve liked but as Oktoberfest was on everywhere was booked up and any accomodation still available in the city centre would cost a fortune.

As we had arrived incredibly early (about 5 hrs before check in) our room wasn’t ready.  As much as we wanted to get a few hours kip, it would have been stupid to sleep when we were only there for two days.  We decided to ask the three women at reception if they could pinpoint exactly where the festival was located and how we could get there.  Baring in mind it’s the biggest tourist attraction Munich has and it takes place every year and gets around six million visitors you would have thought any German person would know exactly where it is and how to get to it.  Alas these women weren’t entirely sure where it was.  Speaking in English didn’t really yield any results and it was only when Quentin and Piotr started speaking in their native Polish did we get some results.  I must admit listening to five people speak in a mixture of broken English, German and Polish started to get on my nerves (don’t forget I’d been awake 23hrs).  I decided to familiarise myself with a map outside whilst the rest argued at reception.

We dumped our bags in the room.  The room consisted of five beds (we only needed four but the fifth bed did come in handy, you’ll find out why later) a wardrobe and a table and chairs.  It wasn’t the most salubrious of bedrooms and the bathroom was out in the hallway and we would have to share it with whatever riff raff were staying there as well.  I have stayed in far worse places before so wasn’t too concerned.  We all had a quick shower each (not together obviously) and Quentin couldn’t bare to stand in the shower and make contact with the floor, so he made sure he had a plastic bag to stand on at all times.  Whilst waiting for Quentin to shower Kelvin decided to reveal to Piotr and I that he prefers to sleep in the nude, especially as he didn’t have his Nylon Kung Foo pyjamas with him, because they “cause sparks” apparently.  You may wonder why I’m sharing this information with you, but all will be revealed (well, hopefully not…) later on.  Stay tuned.

So, armed with our instructions on what to say to the bus driver in German we headed into the city to tackle Oktoberfest 2011!  We were off, we were going to get amongst 6 million drunken revellers and party hard…”Excuse me?” we said to the very attractive door woman who was standing outside one of the huge beer tents “How do we get in and get a drink?”.  “Sorry, the festival doesn’t open until tomorrow” she replied…Bugger, we were a day early.

When confronted with disappointment I decided to do what I always do, go get a Pizza (currently eating 3 Pizza’s a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner).  We popped into an Italian restaurant called Il Castagno which had a small garden so that we could dine Au Naturel.  I ordered the Pepperoni with extra mushroom although to be honest I wasn’t too keen on the mushroom so decided to remove most of it.

Whilst waiting for the Pizza I missed something happen.  It’s very rare for me to miss something happen, but I did indeed miss something happen.  I did notice a woman who must have been in her early 40’s join two men at a table (so far so potential Prostitution racket) opposite us.  However what I failed to see was the provocative hand gestures she made with the rather large black pepper shaker that was on the table.  Maybe it didn’t happen, I don’t know, but we’ll have to assume it did happen.  After this she left.

The Pizza took far longer to eat than it should’ve mainly due to the fact I had to try to cut it with a knife which was as sharp as a very blunt spoon.  We also enjoyed our first German beers of the holiday (2 each), little did we know we were now on a one way trip to booze central.  Those first beers are always so innocent aren’t they?

As I had been to Munich before (“table for one sir?”) I decided to take the team into the city to experience some of traditional style pubs and Bavarian atmosphere.  We hit possibly the most famous pub in the city the HofBrau House.  This is a great pub with now legendary status.  I have to point out that whilst in here we were drinking two pint Steins each, so effectively we were drinking two pints as quickly as we would normally drink one pint.  Dangerous.  There is a certain buzz about the place and when the Oompah band aren’t playing you can here the noise of everybody speaking at the same time, it’s quite strange.

We were joined at our table by “Strike me pink you flamin’ galar!” an Australian couple.  The guy was called Riley and unfortunately I can’t remember his girlfriend’s name, they were very nice though.  However by this time the two pint Steins were beginning to take effect on Kelvin, not only was he convinced that Riley was actually the Fonz from Happy Days (thus forcing Riley to shout “Heyyyyyy!” every 5mins whilst giving the thumbs up) he was also bashing his hands on the table so loudly in a kind of “Down it! Down it!” kind of way that he actually got a telling off from one of the bar staff.  No it wasn’t good, he was given a severe reprimand, pretty much a booking, just a yellow card but if he did it again it would’ve been a red card and straight out for an early shower (without the plastic carrier bag to stand on).

Even after this warning Kelvin and now Quentin continued to bang on the tables once again in a “Down it, Down it!” kind of way.  Strangely every time they did this everyone in the pub joined in, even though nobody was doing anything crazy and we weren’t celebrating anything.  Anyway, after three two pint Steins each we decided to move on, we were definitely becoming more lubicated  (have  I mentioned that I had been awake for around 32 hrs by this point?…)

Next we headed to the the Augustiener bar which is very similar to the Hofbrau Haus except smaller.  Here we had to share a table with three American chicks, which certainly wasn’t an unpleasant experience.  We quenched our thirst with another two pint Stein each and I did manage to get an American girl’s phone number, alas we can forget all about this as she does not reply to text messages (most women don’t, strange that…).  A very brief holiday romance.

We decided that we loved the Hofbrau Haus so much that we wanted to go back, so we did.  At this point I have to say I don’t like people who push into queues, I certainly don’t like to think that we barged into the queue.  So what I’m going to say is that the three lovely Swiss girls who were fairly close to the front of the queue decided to let us in.  The Swiss can simply be known as M, V and S.  After a very brief stint here we decided to go somewhere else for a beer, as we were pretty thirsty at this stage.  We escorted our new female friends to an Irish pub.  I had been to this pub before and knew it was a busy popular place and that was an understatement, it was absolutely heaving.  I believe there was a live band playing but to be honest we were pretty drunk at this point and I had probably been awake about 35 hrs by now.  I’m convinced that there was a couple sitting at a table quietly drinking there own drinks and minding their own business, however as we stood our drinks on their table it soon got to the point when we were drinking not only our drinks but their drinks as well.  Sadly the guy kept buying more drinks for him and his girlfriend only for them to get continually drunk by us, strangley the guy seemed to find this amusing or at least from what I remember he did…By this time we were seriously drunk, the Swiss girls seemed to be tolerating us.  Kelvin was playing Air Guitar, Quentin had created his own dance floor in the middle of the bar, I have no idea what Piotr was doing and I was getting in an increasingly bad mood.  We were all a mess and as the bar was getting more and more busy and my mood was getting worse and worse I decided something had to give, and it was me.  I had to get out…The rain was hammering down outside, but I didn’t really care.  I think I spent maybe one hour walking around in circles in the rain.  Drenched to the bone I tried to get a taxi back to our hostel.  I don’t really know what I was thinking as I didn’t have any keys so even if I got back I wouldn’t be able to get into our room.  Even so I persevered.  I climbed into a taxi and asked the driver to take me home, I didn’t have the address on me but knew the street was called ‘Industriastrabe’.  So I shouted “Industriastrabe!” at the driver a few times, but he wasn’t having any of it.  So I climbed back out the taxi, possibly hurling abuse at the driver as I left.  I was back in the rain.  I climbed into the next taxi, “Industriastrabe!” I shouted at him.  Still no luck, he didn’t want to know either.  OK, I tried one more taxi, this time I tried a different approach.  I got into the taxi, called Kelvin on my phone and asked him to read the Hostel address to the driver from the card he had in his wallet.  Sadly that didn’t work as again this taxi driver didn’t want to know.  So I hurled more abuse at him, then left.  Back out into the rain.  I managed to meet back up with Kelvin, Quentin and Piotr, together all four of us managed to get a taxi together.  Apparently whilst I went for my wander in the rain, Kelvin decided to take a lie down in the street to try to compose himself, or at least get some sleep.

We arrived back at the hostel and immediately dived into our respective beds (did I tell you I had been awake for 38 hrs?), we were all incredibly drunk and incredibly tired.  As I tend to do, particularly when I’ve been drinking I find nothing better then falling asleep listening to some angry Metal music on my Ipod.  I began to drift off to sleep with just the sound of Metal ringing in my ears.  Whilst I was drifting along on a wave of Metal tunes I suddenly felt my bed sheets lift up…this felt a little strange…Was the girl of my dreams in Germany?  Was she climbing into my bed?  Were all my dreams about to come true?…

Actually no.   As I began to awaken from my slumber I could once again hear the Metal ringing in my ears and as I opened my eyes I could see it was Kelvin who was lifting up my sheets and diving into my bed.  Intruder Alert!!  What on earth was wrong with his bed?  What was wrong with the spare bed? Why was he getting into my bed?  It seems he got out of his bed and sleep walked over to my bed.

If you were paying attention earlier then you will be fully aware that Kelvin mentioned that he prefers to sleep in his birthday suit with everything on display.  Luckily for me he was wearing clothes, not his Nylon Kung Foo Pyjamas, but at least he had something on.  Horrified at having to share my single bed with another man I tried to get out, but he was lying on my earphones…It was no use, I had to leave the earphones and make a run for it.  I told the earphones I would be back for them, but they told me they were trapped and injured and that they would slow me down.  They told me to save myself, and I did.  I made it to the relative safety of the spare bed.  How long before Kelvin noticed I had gone?  Would he come after me?  I was unsure, so spent the remainder of the night sleeping with one eye open…

I awoke the next day to see that Kelvin was now back in his original bed, my bed was now free and I was still in the spare bed.  “Why are you sleeping there?” Kelvin asked when he woke up.  Ha!  Did he really want to know?

Also why did Kelvin have white powder on his glasses?  It was nothing to do with me, and reports of him going to the toilets in the pub with a credit card and a rolled up £10 note have yet to be confirmed.  Indeed a messy night.

Saturday 17th Sept:

It’s fair to say everyone felt like death today, we had the hangovers from hell, yet we hadn’t even been in the beer festival, how ironic.  Today was going to be a hard day…

After the obligatory showering, some standing on carrier bags, some not, we headed to the festival.  It’s fair to say Germans do like their beer and the festival itself was huge, we’d never seen so many sausages (of all shapes and sizes) and lots of women in traditonal Bravarian outfits.  I can’t remember the names of those outfits, but you know the one I’m talking about.  There was certainly a large amount of boobage on display, personally I don’t think I have seen such a large concentration of womens boobs brazenly and openly on display.  All women of all ages were leaving little to the imagination, everything was pointing out and being thrust in your face, but obviously this was classily done.  Anyway that’s just something I noticed, maybe no one else noticed that.  It was certainly soothing my hungover eyes and my headache.  There was however only one way to get rid of the hangover and that was to start drinking again, we had to, it was the only way to balance the equilibrium.  All the tents were heaving with people (and bosoms) and as we didn’t get there early and we didn’t have reserved tickets we had to trawl the whole site looking for anywhere to sit whilst munching on the odd sausage to keep our energy up.  Of the twenty or so tents we found two which were less busy and thus we found a small area in each to sit or stand which wasn’t too crowded.  Check my spelling but I believe the two tents we favoured were the Nymphenburg (?) tent and the Pshorr tent.  By this time Piotr was really struggling with his hangover, he had relapsed.   We forced him to stay out and it was only when Kelvin and Quentin started to buy £12 bottles of water that we decided to head home.

The festival was great and I would certainly go back, and what was quite surprising was that with thousands of people there I never saw any sort of attitude or violence.  I’m sure if that was held in England it would be a different story…Just as we began to leave the heavens opened and it poured down with rain, a wise time to leave.

On the way back we decided to go for one last pint in the Irish pub, for old times sake.  Piotr was desperate to go back to the hostel and it was only when we bumped into the Swiss girls again did he perk up, so to speak.  As if by magic the night out had now been extended!  There was plenty of Air guitar going on, in fact I think at one point there was an entire Air band with possibly Kelvin on guitar, Piotr on drums and I played a little bit of bass.  Although that may be wrong, I can’t remember, we are Air multi-instrumentalists anyway, so we can easily change instruments at the drop of a hat.  That’s what made the band great and kept everything fresh and exciting.

The Swiss girl who we shall call M had also developed an annoying habit of tapping on the top of my bottle of beer whenever I wasn’t looking so that my beer would froth up and go all over me.  This was amusing the first three or four times but did get a tad annoying especially when the final time it frothed up so much I dropped the bottle on the floor smashing it to smithereens.  To her credit, she did feel very guilty about it and disappeared off to the bar to buy me another beer, bless her.

The evening drew to another stumbling drunken conclusion, we bode a fond farewell to the Swiss chicks and headed for the taxis.  None of us were prepared for the taxi we got into…I can’t remember what it was but it felt souped up, maybe lowered, with lights on the bottom like something out of The Fast and the Furious.  It was the party taxi!  Schumacher in the driving seat was actually DJ’ing whilst driving, playing awful Euro dance and Hip Hop.  It was easily the loudest taxi or even car I have ever been in.  Whether it was necessary for the  driver to proclaim at the top of his voice “F**k, P***Y,F**K” I’m not entirely sure.  Maybe he was just trying to impress the 4 guys in his taxi, or maybe he was just mad.  Either way I’m not sure I would necessarily opt for the party taxi again if I was faced with that option, unless of course it was covered bonnet to boot in pink velvet leopard skin then I may have to have a rethink…

Sunday 18th Sept:

Another day, another hangover.  Athough this was the second hangover it still felt really bad, as bad as the first hangover, even though technically everybody knows second hangovers can never be as bad as first hangovers. 

We checked out and started our mammoth journey home, we had another 15hrs of travelling ahead of us.  We decided to avoid the toll roads of France and instead take in the scenery of Germany, Holland, Belgium before swerving back into France to board the ferry home.  I say ‘we’ avoided the toll roads, when really I was not in a fit state to drive, which meant Kelvin rather unfortunately drove a full 15 hrs single handedly.  I spent most of the drive home asleep, I just couldn’t stay awake.  Then when I was awake, I was having trouble getting my eyes to focus.  I decided it was because I was either hungover or worse still drunk…I later found out it was because I had my contact lenses in the wrong way around.  Schoolboy error.  

High praise should go to Kelvin for driving 15hrs on his own, I’m not sure how he stayed awake the whole journey, maybe he didn’t, maybe the car was on Autopilot, we’ll never know, but we made it back.

I arrived home at about 2:00AM, finally I could climb into my bed for a proper nights sleep…No I couldn’t!  I had to be up at 6:00Am, then be at work at 7:00AM…No rest for the wicked.  Rock and indeed Roll.