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Oktoberfest (Munich)
by SugarSpun Oktoberfest is the largest beer festival in the world, stemming from the 19th century marriage of Prince Ludwig, when he and his new wife invited all of Munich to share their celebrations. Now, the Theresienwiese area of the city is all but filled up with up to 250 000 revellers at any one time, all intent on having as much fun as ... possible. There are around 14 main beer tents and a few smaller ones with food specialities - Fischer Vroni is a fish tent, and I recommend you don't wear any clothing you might want again during your stay if you go in. Each one has a different reputation. Hippodrom is for the fashionistas, and is crammed to the rafters (these "tents" are semipermanent structures and do indeed have rafters) from about 11am any weekend day. The Hofbrau Festzelt , right in the middle of the Wies'n grounds, is the place to go for a giant party experience, while other tents may be more sedate. Things it's worth knowing: A litre of beer this year was Euro8.60, with tip the same Euro10 as last year. Don't even try not to tip the staff, unless you're looking for them to never come near you again. The first Sunday at the Braurosl tent is known locally as Gay Sunday. The tent is packed from some ungodly hour of the morning, and if you're easily shocked it's best to stay away, The beer is stronger than you're used to. Be careful. You're allowed to bring the cheaper food from the stalls outside into the tents, although you can't bring drinks in for obvious reasons. It's traditional to wipe the chicken grease from your fingers onto your Lederhosen, it conditions the leather. Lederhosen are passed down from father to son and the older the lederhosen the more prestigious they are. They cannot be washed, and it is customary for men to go without underwear when wearing them. Think of this before you accept a casual hookup. Any soft drinks you buy outside come with a one euro surcharge and a little ticket. This is a deposit against the return of the bottle - return it and you get your euro back. It is easier to get into a tent if you're wearing traditional dress. You can buy these cheaply enough at various shops around the city. If you're wearing one of those absurd tourist hats you're not getting in. You should wear sturdy shoes or risk losing your toes. If you can, go on the fairground when you've had one or two beers - enough to make it less important that you just paid Euro6 for a three minute ride, but not enough that you'll revisit your beer. Everything closes at 11pm. This is normal for Munich. Go home and sleep it off. You can take the U-Bahn from Theresienwiese or the S-Bahn from Hackerbrucke. Both are busy, but the U-Bahn has a long escalator that has claimed many stumbling victims. Take care of your valuables, and bring nothing into the Wiesn that you can't afford to lose. Have fun. Prost! Read the complete review |
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Oktoberfest (Munich)
by Nat_test Hesitant at first about joining in the madness, I am glad I did so. Here is my account, or rather, an "Ausländer's" guide to the Munich Oktoberfest, a festival that hosted 6.3 million visitors in two weeks. As much as like beer, the draw card for me was visiting the city of Munich. Currently I am living in Berlin ... and sadly I haven't managed to see much of Germany outside the "Poor but Sexy" Capital. Munich is, in a nutshell, the richer, better looking, but more conservative older sister of Berlin. It's lush with public parks, has an endless amount of architecturally snazzy glass buildings, and the public have a strange penchant for wearing garments that make you feel like you have travelled back in time. I am not a big fan of dressing up, but in Munich during the time of the Oktoberfest you are the odd one out if you don't. At lest half of the city are walking around in traditional dress at any one time. For ladies its the traditional 'Dirndl' which is rather similar to a to milk maids dress. Not a milk maids dress for working mind you, but more the movie kind that buxomest blonde's wear in the Russ Myer film 'Supervixens'. For men unfortunately its not so sexy as they wear 'Lederhosen'. Lederhosen are the leather pants that German mean are stereotyped as wearing while performing Omm-pa-pa music. Personally the pants don't do it for me, but with a price tag of around one thousand euro a pair, it is possible there is more too it than just the aesthetics of the chuffing shorts (I am thinking its reflection of ones wealth and a guage by which you choose your prospective husband). So I donned one of these Dirndl outfits as I was lucky enough to be staying with Bavarian family who had a wardrobe full of them. The hair is braided into a french plait if you can muster it. My dress was black with a red apron with a short sleeved blouse. The whole dress reached my heels and wasn't too busty, but the waist had a corset. So even though I had no fear of falling out of the garment, oxygen deprivation while drinking is quite a challenge. On arrival to the Oktoberfest I felt that all descriptions given to me prior were quite poor. First of all it is a fairground. Rides and sugary snacks everywhere. There were even two rollercoasters and an uncountable number of hauted houses. Apparently the festival uses more power in two weeks than the whole of Munich in a year so you can imagine how many bright lights and whirring machines their were. Secondly, A 'beer tent' is not actually a tent at all. A 'tent' is a structure that takes three months to build and is very permanent looking. They are gigantic! I was quite surprised to learn that the buildings are pulled down after every festival. Three months work for a temporary bar that lives for only two weeks. Each tent holds around 4,000 people minimum and has its own target audience. There is a tent for the under 30's, a tent for Italians, a tent for Australasians and the list goes on. Each tent is sponsored by a brewery that has had the rights to build the tent for eons. No new breweries are allowed sponsor tents so it is rather an old boys club with exclusive membership. This I was told is a ages old argument that media cover every year in the months leading up to the festival. Once inside the tent, we were lucky enough to have had a table. I am not sure what the target audience of the tent was, but it seemed to me to be a rather local crowd. The interior of the tent was brightly lit, loud and hot. Chaos reined as as thousands of people were crammed at hundreds of tables. Everyone was yelling loudly to the person beside them, and the person beside them was trying to get the attention of one of the waiters or waitresses by yelling some more. Getting a spare seat was truly an impossible mission. Once seated there is rather little else to do other than eat, drink and be merry. Being merry is a natural progression that is accelerated after consuming your first one litre 'mass'. A mass is a beer glass that is larger than your head. As a general rule I don't try to eat anything that is larger than my head but seeing I had never had a reason to extend this to drinking I thought it was worth a shot. A litre of beer cost eight euro. Rounding this up with a generous tip so that you will be served again, ten euro for a litre was still a good deal. Especially at the start of the night when you hastily proclaim that you could never possibly drink more than a litre of anything. I think the key to the festive vibe at the Oktoberfest is the fact that drinking and eating go hand and hand. Ultra salted pretzels (the size of four heads combined) and a constant flow of rotisserie chicken that are cooked in the hundreds on wall mounted racks ensure that you are constantly parched and needing a drink (and that you come out of the tent smelling great!) To my surprise there were very few people that I saw that could not hold their alcohol, and even though I did stand in some sticky patches outside later in the night, the general mood was one of community and festivity which of course was expressed through loud and cheerful singing. One thing the Germans are good at is taking English pop songs and attaching German lyrics to them. In fact, any ditty that is yelled out at a football match is yelled out in the beer tents, often the prompting the crowd to take another swig. Expect the band to cover hits from Ricky Martin, Four Non Blondes. From about six o'clock onwards everyone is standing on the bench seats singing and dancing. Its a bit of a balancing acting dodging the drunkards who shouldn't be on the tables dancing, but even when people fall they are too limber to be injured and the beer glasses to think to be cracked. The tents are open till 11pm at night, which if you live in Berlin is ridiculously early, but here it is accepted comes around with no fuss at all. It is an exodus to the U-bahn, but with the efficiency that the Germans are famous for it all goes without a hitch. Read the complete review |
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Oktoberfest (Munich)
by Andy.mack I'd always quite fancied a trip to Munich during September to experience the event known around the world as Oktoberfest. I'd pretty much ruled it out for this year what with moving house and was aiming to go next year till my Dad suggested I go with them this year. So on the 15th September we set off for Munich to visit the most famous ... and probably biggest beer festival in the world. From the moment you get on the plane you know it's going to be busy as the plane from Stanstead was packed full of groups of Australians, Americans and English all heading over for the weekend. So how did Oktoberfest start? Well it originated back in 1810 as a celebration of the Wedding between Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Theresa of Saxony-Hildburghausen. After the wedding the Royal couple invited all the people of Munich to celebrate their wedding with them. Over the years the festival got bigger and bigger as the Munich breweries carried on the tradition. As time went by they enhanced the reputation and added to the festivities with the introduction of parades in 1887 to really kick things off. The festival itself runs from the 16th September to the 3rd October every year. It's held quite close to the centre of Munich on the Theresienwiese (Theresa's Fields) in front of the city gates with the watchful statue of Lady Bavaria in the background. Getting to the site is simple enough with the U Bahn and S Bahn running quite close to the site. With the U Bahn there is actually a station that opens out onto the site at Theresienwiese station, but this does get very crowded. We chose instead to get the S Bahn from our hotel which stops at Hackerbrücke and it's only about a 5 minute walk from there to the site, made all the easier by following all the locals. As you can imagine the festival site can get quite crowded and it's a very good job they have very wide streets up through the middle of all the tents. Entry to the festival and the Beer halls is free and anyone can turn up and just have a walk around the site, without necessarily partaking in any alcohol, but where would the fun be in that? The site consists of 14 Beer tents from Munich's biggest breweries set out along two streets, with a large funfair filling up the rest of the smaller roads to the back of the site. Mixed in amongst all this are numerous food stalls selling Bavarian specialities like Sausage and Roast Chicken and a number of souvenir stalls with official Oktoberfest merchandise and it's all quite reasonably priced. The biggest challenge of Oktoberfest seems to be finding a seat inside one of the Beer Halls as it was incredibly busy, especially as it was the opening weekend. The best idea seemed to be to get there around the middle of the day as they open at around 10 but trying to keep a seat in one all day will prove difficult as generally after 4 or 5 hours you will be incredibly drunk. Each tent has a variety of live bands playing a mixture of traditional Bavarian Oompah music and more universally known tracks like "Let Me Entertain You" and "Sweet Home Alabama". While each brewery has at least one tent, they also brew a special, stronger beer just for the occasion. The normal 5% beers aren't served on the site and instead they tend to go for something between 6 and 8% in content. So when you consider a litre (about 2 pints) stein is around €7 (£5) it's not too bad. All you have to do is find a table inside one of the Halls or in the beer gardens and someone will come and serve you. It can get quite busy and obviously the better tip you give them later in the day usually results in quicker service as it gets a lot busier. Of course one sure fire way to get a table in the evening is to book advance using the Munich tourist directory, which I've got a link to at the end. This makes it a much simpler way to get into the tent and ensure you have somewhere to enjoy the festivities. Of course they don't just serve beer within these halls, there are also a number of meals, pretty similar to those available outside, available to eat in there as well. Although we didn't eat in these Halls there was the usual selection of Chicken and Sausage along with Sauerkraut and the famous Munich White sausage. The portions looked pretty reasonable, but as we didn't get a menu I couldn't actually tell you what the prices were like. Obviously the main reason for Oktoberfest is to enjoy the traditionally brewed Bavarian beers there is something for everyone. During our first two days there they held a parade with all the breweries represented and as a showcase for the Bavarian national dress, something people in Bavaria are very proud of. These parades are only on the opening two days but are well worth seeing if you can be there on one of those days. If you miss them or can't make those days you'll still be able to enjoy the delights of the biggest funfair in Europe, scattered around the edges of the beer halls. There are some 200 rides and side attractions catering for all levels of thrill seekers, just watch what you drink before hand. The rides again are quite reasonably priced at around 2 - 4 Euros (£1.40 - £2.80). Like all pubs the festival does have opening hours with Weekdays seeing the halls open from about 10 am till10.30pm and at Weekends opening an hour earlier at 9am. The bands are on for the whole day and finish at 10.30pm as well with the official kicking out time being 11.30pm, giving you an hour to finish up that last stein of beer before heading for a cramped train back to your hotel. Having arrived there on the Saturday morning unsure of what exactly to expect it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. The streets are lined with these semi permanent structures filled with people drinking and having a good time, something we could never do in Britain without it resorting in a mass brawl, something that we didn't see happen at all over the weekend. For an event this size to be largely trouble free shows that the German police handled it right and it means everyone can have a worry free, good time. Overall my opinion of Oktoberfest changed drastically over the weekend. Before I went it seemed like a decent weekend but wasn't sure quite how it could be done. Now sitting looking back on it I think it's a fantastic weekend that I will certainly be back to as regularly as I can. Even if drinking isn't really your thing, Munich has plenty of other attractions you could visit during the three weeks and also allow you to at least see what Oktoberfest is all about. It may not be as cheap as drinking in the beer halls in the centre but it's a totally different experience. My advice, get booked up for next year and go, it's well worth it. Advance bookings: www.muenchen-tourist.de Useful site for Hotels: www.hotel.de Read the complete review |
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More Travel / Autobahn linking Münich to Berlin. |
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8 reviews More Travel / Locals call it the Wies'n and many of us know it as the beer festival. It's said to be the biggest public festival in the world. Over 6 million people attend. |
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2 reviews Potsdamer Straße 5, 10785 Berlin. Tel:(030) 44 316 316 / More Travel / (030) 25 922 111. |
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2 reviews More Travel / Berlin's annual techno music extravaganza, the Love Parade. Berlin's Love Parade, now in its twelfth year, moves through the Tiergarten park accompanied by loud techno music and scantily clad dancers and ends at the Brandenburg Gate, where revellers celeb |
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