Bavarians certainly love their beer. Over the two weeks of Oktoberfest, more than seven million people visit the festival grounds — and I swear every one of those seven million was already there when we showed up. The place was packed with people eating, drinking, enjoying the carnival rides and buying cheesy souvenirs. Each one of the dozens of beer tents can hold 10,000 partyers, and they were so full they were turning people away. Whew.

Mass chaos is not really our scene, so we walked around for a bit, took some photos, and then escaped back to the hotel to have a beer in peace and quiet.

We were badly in need of a rest anyway, since Oktoberfest was not the only thing we did today. We also spent a couple hours exploring the Deutsches Museum, the world’s largest museum of science and technology (i.e. geek heaven). Floor after floor of exhibits covered everything from physics and computing to transport and aeronautics, though we would have learned a lot more if we could read German (some of the displays had English explanations, but not all). My favorite exhibit was the cross-section of a German U-boat that was used as a training submarine before World War I. Cool stuff.

On to the Alps tomorrow…