Lederhosen!

Managed to get into a tent today, and when I say tent, we're talking great big beer hall, that holds up to 10,000 people! It was awesome. No other word for it. We managed to find a table (or part of) in the second one and we perched ourselves with a German, an Austrian and two Irish fellas. The Irish boys were looking a bit fragile when we got there and even had the shakes, though they subsided after a couple of hours! They had a late afternoon flight to catch but it was a good craic with them until they left. The band were great, lots of singing and every 10/15 mins they would play a kind of anthem, so everyone would get up and clink their steins together with neighbouring tables.

It's such an organised set-up there - everything works well, efficient table service, so no queueing for anything (other than the loos) and friendly girls / ladies who must have arms of steel, to be carrying anything upwards from 4 steins in one go. No idea how they do it. We saw one on Friday when we arrived who had at least 10 full steins in her arms - unbelievable. They must have lots of training!

A friend found me about 6pm - it was sketchy at this point, but we'd tentatively arranged to meet. It was our second meeting, having been on the same training course before we both started floating in 2007, but we've been e-mail pals ever since and so it was wonderful to see her again. She came with her German boyf. and they had dressed up for the occasion. They looked fab!

As I said, it was all a bit sketchy but we ventured back to the carousel that we found last night, for some fresh air and then did some of the fairground rides before getting ourselves our daily bratwurst!


...Four hours later, at 5am the taxi picked us up for our early morning flights home. Not good.

Edit: This looks better BIG!