The Big Gay Day @ Oktoberfest

I don’t like beer. I don’t like smoke. I don’t like to sweat outside of the gym. So how could I possibly enjoy the Big Gay Day at Oktoberfest? After spending over six hours inside a tent full of thousands of drunk homos, I realized it’s all about the company you keep while standing on benches swaying to the Oompa band.

And since it’s 10:00 p.m. Sunday night, just a few hours after returning from the event, let’s just say a 10 point summary is the best I can muster. I’ll save the intimate details for the article I’ll write next year for publishing stateside. Because as I found out today, if you’re unfamiliar with Oktoberfest and the Big Gay Day, you need all the help you can get.

1. Our day started at 9:45 a.m. And even then, we found ourselves standing in a line for more than an hour before sneaking our way through a side-door.

2. I assumed I’d have to chug my first beer to make the second go down easier. Instead, the beer was actually not half bad. Sure, I mixed it with some spearmint gum and held my breath while drinking, but even then, it could have been worse.

3. The crowd wasn’t that attractive. I thought I’d find a few more hot men in liederhosen for my “Men of Oktoberfest” posting in a few weeks, but in the end I found two.

4. I held off going to the bathroom longer than I have in years – seven hours. I don’t like to pee in troughs.

5. The band plays a rotation of five songs for the first five hours. Afterwards, they throw in some soft sounds of the 70s including John Denver and the Eagles.

6. I made five euros by returning bottles to the beverage counter. I originally had one, but collected more from the table as I thought my efforts should be rewarded for walking across the tent in such extreme conditions.

7. It was hot and smoky. In fact, it was really hot and really smoky. My eyes are still burning and I sound like Carol Channing.

8. There were many times I wanted to take off my shirt. Not that I wanted Oktoberfest to evolve into a circuit party, it’s just the fact it was extremely hot. And knowing excessive sweat flattens my hair, it was something I wanted to avoid. But removing your clothes is against tent policy – out in the open anyways. The bathrooms, I guess, are another story.

9. The sun is extremely bright after you’ve been inside drinking for hours. We felt like exposed night crawlers after making our exit past the hundreds still waiting to join the party.

10. We’ll be doing it all again in less than two weeks when our friends arrive from Chicago. But because there’s only one Big Gay Day at Oktoberfest, something tells me it won’t be the same. Then again, with 10 of us going, we’ll make that day at Oktoberfest gay enough.