Newcastle and Oktoberfest. Two words you wouldn’t naturally put together. But give the Geordies an excuse to climb onto tables, belt out a few German drinking songs and consume suspiciously strong lager from glasses large enough to qualify as flower vases, and somehow you’ve got the attention of an entire city.

And so it was that three of us descended upon the Toon for what was intended to be a civilised afternoon of cultural appreciation.

Well, that was the official story anyway.

With Newcastle United playing at home, our first challenge wasn’t finding the beer. It was keeping an eye out for Aston Villa shirts. Being Midlands lads, we were already conscious that our accents might attract attention if the football didn’t go according to plan.

Our first watering hole offered something cloudy, hoppy and vaguely resembling beer, served in surroundings where elbow room was considered a luxury upgrade. After a suitable warm-up, we ventured to the Head of Steam to see how the competition compared.

All very respectable so far. Almost cultured.

Then came 5pm.

Time to enter what must surely have been the only tent in Newcastle with both planning permission and an alcohol licence. A remarkable achievement in itself.

Inside, we’d stumbled upon what appeared to be the annual convention of Amazon Prime’s lederhosen department. Every possible interpretation of traditional Bavarian dress was on display, much of it presumably still bearing the creases from the packaging delivered the previous afternoon.

The beer arrived in enormous steins, the trombone made its first appearance, and the wooden tables began to wobble under the combined weight of enthusiastic revellers chanting “PROST!” at every available opportunity.

The atmosphere was tremendous. Every few minutes, another drinking song erupted, everyone raised their glasses, and another considerable quantity of German lager disappeared.

Then, rather unexpectedly, came last orders.

Had we drunk Newcastle dry? Had the Germans surrendered? Was there some obscure Bavarian licensing law we’d overlooked?

No. It transpired we’d been a little too enthusiastic and accidentally booked ourselves into the earlier session.

Apparently, the organisers required time to scrape the enthusiasm off the sticky wooden floors, recover the steins and prepare for round two.

So, naturally, we went to the pub.

A brief return to some good old-fashioned English hoppy beer helped restore a degree of equilibrium. Or at least that’s what we told ourselves.

And then it was time for the main event.

Oktoberfest: Round Two.

If the afternoon session had been lively, the evening crowd had clearly received an entirely different set of instructions.

The German flag dropped, the lights went green, and suddenly it was lights out and away we go. The evening session launched with all the enthusiasm of an F1 race, although considerably fewer people appeared interested in remaining seated.

The music was louder, the singing was louder, and the jumping seemed to defy several basic laws of physics. The tables were taking a proper hammering, the trombone was working overtime, and the steins continued to circulate at an impressive rate.

By this point, the only German most people had mastered was “PROST!”, although it was being delivered with increasingly convincing accents and decreasing levels of coordination.

Eventually, having reached what we considered peak performance, we made the sensible decision to leave the hometown professionals to finish the job.

After all, we still had to get home.

And that’s where things became interesting.

Newcastle station was absolutely packed with football supporters heading home, many of whom were still coming to terms with Villa’s defeat.

Now, Chris and I both have Midlands accents. Not Birmingham accents, I hasten to add, but close enough geographically that we decided this probably wasn’t the moment to explain the finer distinctions.

So, for the remainder of our time on the platform, we adopted a slightly more northern tone and kept a low profile.

The last thing we needed was to be nominated as honorary Aston Villa representatives by several hundred disappointed football fans.

Thankfully, the train arrived, we squeezed aboard, and the journey home passed without diplomatic incident.

We even made it back before Cinderella would have needed to call an Uber.

Another successful HOC social outing!

Three lads, two Oktoberfest sessions, several establishments, a heroic trombone player and enough German lager to temporarily disrupt international trade.

And not a motorbike in sight.

These social outings are becoming something of a habit. Who knows, perhaps next year we’ll take Oktoberfest a little more seriously and head to Germany itself.

Although, judging by Newcastle’s efforts, the Germans might have some catching up to do.

Prost! 🍻