Date: 7 October

Location: Supercharger, a whole foods cafe, the slick new Melbourne Emporium. Hoping seaweed, silken tofu and tahini will atone for my sins.

Less stretching this week. More steins.

Oktoberfest happened. The Munich Brauhaus is as close as you can get to the real deal in the Southern Hemisphere. Wood panelled and expansive, jolly and loud, Frankishaner on tap and a loud, buxom Germans on stage, it inhales hungry Melbournians and exhales drunk and exhausted little Fräuleins and … the male equivalent of Fräuleins.

We had almost a full cohort — 30+ — in attendance and, I’m very proud to say, an excellent proportion was in costume. These ranged from the extremely tight and brief last minute eBay purchase such as that modelled by Clark Kent’s girlfriend, to the cutesy, classical, conservative and home-sewn, such as that modelled by The Planeteer (which was for the best as, on her, with those baby giraffe legs, China’s finest one-piece, taffeta-fluffed beer wench costume would look like one of those terrible Project Runway moments where Heidi cringes and murmurs to Zac Posen, ‘Did I see cheeks?’). Clark Kent himself sported, what we’ve since learned, is a traditional Bavarian hat. Sadly for him, it was tall and pointy and wide-brimmed and bore more than a passing resemblance to the Sorting Hat. That hat spent a lot of the evening being ripped from his head and plonked onto those of others to a chorus of “GRYFFINDOR” or “SLYTHERIN!”. Hashtag grown-ups?

Within half an hour of sitting down a stranger, who had evidently and nobly committed a significant portion of his day so far to ‘Fest celebrations, was convinced by one of the girls to sing me happy birthday. With no shirt on. My protests were weak, and he knew it.

We consumed a terrifying amount of schnitzelled chicken and a corresponding volume of excellent German beer. We even tried to dance to the equally terrifying German music. Apparently the chicken dance is a thing in beer halls? Lady Lovely Locks stopped trying to tug down her tiny hemline around her second mass of beer. Bunky, having injured her back (‘sleeping’?) turned up a few hours late with Powerjam and crept off early which was a little devastating, but she was in full wench-attire which goes some way to atoning. Dawn and The Planeteer presented me with a red velvet cupcake (which — if memory serves — I promptly denuded of icing with my tongue) and there was more drunken Happy Birthday singing (which was awesome).

At last, the few remaining revellers trudged our way to the Crown Casino taxi queue. There, I found myself convinced to ‘supervise’ the French Man for Blackjack. It was a brilliant idea: we’d just ‘win our taxi fares’ and then leave!

Drat the French and their accents which make things sound like good ideas when they are patently not. Besides, what do we all need to keep in mind when making very late night decisions?

Nothing Good Happens After 2am.

I should be made to write that on the blackboard 100 times.

However, Common Sense must have taken the night off to prop herself up at a brauhaus bar in a slutty dirndl too because it seemed like we just couldn’t lose. Much later, after agreeing that we’d leave ‘after the next blackback’, we both scored an ace and a ten on a single hand and promptly pocketed our substantial winnings. This timing was probably sensible as I am lead to believe that crowing ‘birthday luck!’ in the face of your losing table-fellows is not acceptable behaviour for a newly twentynineyear woman.

Love

Alex

Posted with Blogsy