Volksfest

What a week. Got back from Geneva saturday night. Sunday early afternoon I went to the Volksfest Wasen, the second largest Oktoberfest in Germany, and possibly the world, with the Mexicans plus Oscar, so, the Mexicans. The nice thing about Volksfest is you can take the U bahn, step off, and you are within 20 feet of a booth right off the bat, in the middle of the festival grounds.

It was packed, but not terribly so, since it was sunday very early afternoon, and the people who went last night were still probably sleeping it off. We got into the Stuttgarter Hofbrau tent, a giant tent with probably a thousand people jammed inside. It must have been high school day since the tent was particularly filled with the under 20 crowd (the legal drinking age in Germany is 18, 16 for beer).

Not too surprisingly, a particualry roudy group of teens dumped some beer on a buddy on the table, and ended up accidentally splashing poor Paola. You don't want to dump beer on anyone's girlfriend, but especially not a Mexican's. Rafa, one of the most laid back, calm, peaceful people I know here, got up in the kid's face. I thought 'there's going to be some action here.' But no. The table of kids apologized, including the poor bastard who had the beer dumped on him in the first place. We changed tables and Paola went to the bathroom to towel off the rest of the beer, most unhappy.

We each finished off two maß of beer, nominally two liters, but actually closer to a liter and a half. It's still a staggering amount of alcohol, and stagger we did through the park, taking a few rides before calling it an evening before the crowds got thicker and rowdier.