Yuri:

[snip]
Spaten Oktoberfest Bier ist sehr gut!
[snip]

Ahhhh Spaten! Sounds like fun.

Hey, too bad I'm so far away. I love Spaten, can't get any down here...

Me? I've had an "early" taste of Spaten's first off Oktoberfest Bier at
Spaten's Munchen brewry
and beer hall on the very Friday night before Munchen Oktoberfest opens.

Let me tell you a little bit about my "experience".

Munchen's Oktoberfest always opens right at the noon bell on Saturday
directly after the Saturday
morning Bier parade through downtown to the Oktoberfest site, exactly when
the mayor of Munich
drinks the very first litre of Oktoberfest Bier to open the debauchry.

By the way... The parade is wonderful with all those beautiful hand carved
big Bier Wagons pulled by
those great teams of huge draft horses, pulling the fresh Oktoberfest Bier
from the Munchen brewries
to the fairgrounds.

Then from noon onward all day Saturday, after each thousand litres of
Oktoberfest Bier is consumed the
numerous Umpa bands strike up with a raucus chorous of "Ein Prosit" all over
the fairgrounds to mark the consumption of each thousand litres! This
happens like clockwork all day. Wonderful.

Oktoberfest in Munchen is the world's biggest and best beer bust! If you
don't like "beer busts"
don't go!

I had the pleasure of attending a couple of those extreme Bier events while
escorted by some of my
"expert" Bavarian friends dressed in Leiderhosen. [Guys from Siemens for
whom I was doing some
consulting work at the time].

Once my Bavarian friends got into the swing and our Leiderhosen was covered
in Bier I couldn't stop
them no matter how hard I tried...

:-)

We actually started drinking those lovely pne litre mugs of Oktoberfest Bier
[which they brew but once
per year] on the Saturday noon at opening, and travelled from tent to tent
all day [All the Munchen brewries
have their own huge "tent" each of which seats thousands.] drinking more
litres and enjoyning the music
of those Umpa bands, not stopping until the Oktoberfest Bier spiggots were
turned off at 11:00pm.

Every couple of hours or so the Bavarians would drag me out of the Bier
tents and over to the row of midway
roller coaster rides and then they forced me to go through loops in the air
while trying to get themselves
sober without "spilling" Spaten on the spectators below. Hint... if you
ever do this
don't try to drink litre for litre with the Bavarians!

Then they would march me back to the Bier tents to drink more Oktoberfest
Bier litres until we had sampled
at least two from each of those many fine Munchen brewries inside their
"tents".

Luckily my hotel for that trip into bachanalia was only about 5 blocks from
the fairgrounds and so near
midnight I slowly "walked-wandered-staggered" back through Munchen's
midnight streets and crowds
of drunken revellers to the hotel to fall into bed. The next day, Sunday I
awakend to the world's biggest
headache and still feeling "woozy". Then the phone rang and my Bavarian
friends were down in the lobby
and ready to take me to see Neuswanstein! They didn't seem any the worse
for wear, but me... Ohhhh....

I never again spent a whole day at Oktoberfest...

But Yuri I have a question for you...

How do you reconcile Spaten with Dr. Atkin's way to live?

--
Peter K1PO [Oktoberfest survivor!]
Indialantic By-the-Sea, FL.