September has been a big month for us females from Doncaster Races Ladies day on the 9th to Oktoberfest (aka Dirndl day) in Munich at the end of September. Bavarian
Starting closer to home was our annual knees up at “donny races†where us self-employed ladies dress up, drink champagne and spend our hard earned money on ‘networking.’
We do this ‘networking’ at one of the oldest horse racing events in the country (around 400 years old) and it is Doncaster’s biggest event of the Autumn season.
As well as being a horseracing patent in the country, I believe it is a patent of fashion. We in Yorkshire really do rock the retro glamour with fascinators (bigger the better) and bright colourful hats galore.
This year, the sun was even shining in Doncaster, the horses were… err… running and I even saw a few of them. (This is something that sounds obvious but I find the champagne tent quite an obstruction to the rest of my should-be horse filled day.)
We had a fun time journeying around in a tacky white limo, schmoozing with some stranded business men and then finished off the night nicely eating at Antibo restaurant in Sheffield and a few ‘night caps’ in the lovely Bar 360.
The following weekend was… Cheers to Rugby
Sheffield’s Rugby Union Club held their annual Beer Festival at the beginning of September. I had to (willingly) participate in a scrum with the rugby players all for a good cause.
The Beer festival ran from 11th – 13th September and showcased twenty different types of beer at Abbeydale Sports club near Dore.
The event raised money through prize draws and lucky dips all in aid of local charities; Wooden Spoon Rugby Charity, Bluebell Wood and Floodlight Appeal.
My old school friend Lotoya and I had a great afternoon in the sun sampling beer and drawing the raffle. A regular on our Sheffield events lists me thinks.
I left the Dore – based rugby club for yet another beer fest, this one a little further a field, at the world’s most famous one – ‘Oktoberfest’.
DIRNDL-FEST
Beer-drinking, men in Lederhausen and eating sausages and pretzels, may be heaven for some but for me, It didn’t sound like my kind of fun.
I’m a vegetarian who doesn’t like beer and hadn’t got an acquired taste for a man in a Lederhausen ( a folkloric/dungarees style suit)
Until now…welcome to the world of Oktoberfest.
The Tunisian troupe of ladies gathered at dawn in a cold Sheffield train station as we embarked on our journey to Munchen (Munich, Germany). As per, the journey was not smooth as our makeup had to be bagged, some destroyed, to get through security. For once, I did not bleep (cheap jewellery) but I did nearly miss the flight due to a necessary stop at the Mac counter. No, I don’t mean the computer Macs etc but the beauty that is Mac makeup – a must for all performers and vein athletes as it just stays on.
Nonetheless, we made it to our gorgeous Marriott Hotel in the centre of Munich. We have been enjoying the spa, the American-clad Champions bar and we have been loving MUNICH.
On Saturday, we designed our own walking tour of the city and our first stop was the ‘English Gardens.’ This is basically a big park like Hyde Park in London or a not quite so celubrious Central Park in New York.
Here, we saw a ‘beer bus’ full of drunken English men on a stag do pulling moonies (yes, they really did live up to the clichee) and finally we found the more ‘refined’ Europeans sat in a beer Garden surrounding the Chinese Tower.
There was a brass band playing in the tower as well as sounds of cheers and “prost.†We sat, listened and ate German Sausage, red cabbage, pretzels and I ate… dates.
We then walked into the Old town where we found souvenir shops selling traditional Bavarian goods (Bavaria is the region in which Munich is placed).
As we made our way to the new town our ‘find Dirndl’ mission began as I had heard that a lot of the women dress in Dirndl’s (similar to that of a traditional milkmaid’s outfit), me being me, decided our condition to going to Oktoberfest, the world’s largest beer festival, was to dress-up in a Dirndl.
So we trapsed everywhere from C&A to designer stores to find our perfect Dirndls (of which there were plenty) and in a shopping-blur missed the dancing clock in Munich’s centre.
Nonetheless, we found our Dirndl’s, pinnys and even Bavarian style hats. After all, when in Rome…
After bustling round a busy Munich we stopped off for a Bellini and Apple Strudel before getting very lost and taking the U-barn to reach our hotel.
That was me done for the day, hot chocolate and bed – the party life I lead!
Sunday was OKTOBERFEST! There had been rumours that the smell of stale beer would spoil the atmosphere (as there is now a no smoking policy in the tents) but to my surprise all I could smell was…chicken. Sizzling roasting chicken for all the happy tables full of beer to gnaw at. Even being a veggie it looked good and salty and apparently went well with our litres of beer.
We had a table of 10, which had been booked since November 2009, and it was an eclectic mix of Sheffield ladies and Nottingham MBA alumni. One thing we had in common was the fact that we all dressed-up – ladies in dirndls and men in Lederhausens.
I even had a couple litres of Shandy as German beer tastes so good! I loved the festival atmosphere as it was my kind of event. No mud just wooden decking, no vomiting just merry drinking, no fastfood just fast service and most of all a lot of fancy dress! The ratio of men to women was also a nice surprise as I spend my days teaching women to dance that I rarely see the other ‘sex.’
After 2 litres of the good stuff, dancing on benches and learning ‘cheers’ in German (PROST) we then made our way around the festival.
The festival itself is open to all and looks like something out of Grease, the movie but one thing Germany is good at is eco-friendliness. Not only were the cups recyclable but they were re-usable as you had to pay a deposit on the class or cup you were using to make sure you gave it back. There were lots of bins, not much smoking and only a few people staggering as you have to sit down at a table to be allowed to drink.
There was no ‘drink your own’ Heineken in the mud here. And a note to all Dirndl clad ladies you can show off your cleavage but no skirts above the knee, I’m told it is snuffed at. Talking of Snuffing, there was a lot of ‘air freshener’ bottles being snorted along with the beer… all legal highs here though.
Our ladies trip, was finished off by a spot of self-contained ‘culture’ as we took a tour on a sightseeing bus.
Munich was a fantastic city, very clean, friendly and reasonably priced. It is an attractive city one of which combines the old and new but feels very safe and as a language student I’m happy to report that there was not much English-speaking going on.
Auf wierdersen!
Sophie Mei | 
10 13th, 2010| 
