Oktoberfest & the Wisdom of Cabbies

After my post about fumbling for my travel groove, I got a number of comments & emails containing a wealth of advice. Thanks to you all for your words of wisdom on subjects ranging from Tangiers to Big Macs. One piece of advice, from the esteemed Mr Kevin Carr, I managed to accidentally follow before receiving it. He said something along the lines of, "even cabbies can provied a entry point to the local culture." Here is what happened exactly one day before his email: Lee, Justin & I were staying at the only hostel in Munich which had open beds when I booked a month ago. It was 100-bed barn of a building called The Tent, and it was, without a doubt, the dumpiest dump-hole in town. I will let these two details suffice to illustrate my point 1. At about 4am, someone stumbled into the dorm and peed directly on a (thankfully unoccupied) bed 2. In the morning, every one of the bathrooms was rendered unusable by the profusion of vomit. I am now 28, and I have come to the inexplicably unsettling realization that being surrounded by loud, drunken, vomiting, bed-peeing teenagers is not appealing to me. In our cab on the way to the hostel, the cabbie asked us where we were from - sort of a universal way in which people to say, "I speak English, and I'd like to talk to you." It always feels like a bit of a gift when people do that, and I'm almost always greatful. His English was great, and the conversation naturally turned towards Oktoberfest. The cabbie was a proud Bavarian - not German, but Bavarian. He never once mentioned Germany, but went on at great length about how Oktoberfest is supposed to be a festival of Bavarian culture, and Bavarian food, and Bavarian hospitality. But now, he said with no small amount of disgust, it was full of young people acting stupid. It was, tragically, full of young Italians. Feeling honored that he considered us to be groovy enough to share this opinion, despite the fact the he was driving us to drunken teenager ground zero, I asked which tents he liked at Oktoberfest, and which ones we should go to. He immediately said, "The Augustiner Tent. And you should go by noon, and then leave by 4pm before all the kids show up. The food is very good; you can eat schweinbraten - it is a very good roast made from swine. And drink two or three beers-" the beers are massive 1-liter mugs "-and no more. These people, they drink 5 beers, 6 beers. It is not good. I can drink 5 beers if I want, but I don't do this anymore. I don't need to prove to anyone that I can drink 5 liters of beer." And, friends, that's exactly what we did. Checked out of the Tent a day early, went to the Augustiner Tent, drank three beers, ate the food, which was indeed fantastic, and listened to the Oom-Pah band rock a house jammed with laughing, singing Bavarians. By 5pm, we were on a train bound for France, and I don't regret it one bit. Yes, there is some faint voice inside of me which says, "You're old, and you really wish you could be partying like those kids." But there is another voice, which, while it may not be louder, speaks in a more self-assured tone, and this is what that voice says: "Ignore the first voice because it has always been kind of an idiot. And listen to the cabbie."