Let’s talk about Oktoberfest aka one of the absolutely positively WUNDERBAR weekends of life. But it took some work getting there.
For starters, the Oktoberfest we wanted to attend is the one in Munich, aka the original Oktoberfest with six million people who attend from all over the world. So flights and rooms were pricey. Go ahead and book your tickets now if you are planning to go. We felt very ambitious because half of our days end by 10pm, actually let’s be real, most of our days. But, sometimes there is this little energizer bunny in our hearts that comes out swinging like a toddler charged up on ten red bulls. Besides wanting to go to Oktoberfest at least once in our lives, we wanted the real experience with good friends and good food, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. If you’re planning on going in 2017, you can get more information on what to book and where here.
TRANSPORT & HOTEL
We booked our flights via Lufthansa and stayed at the Bold Hotel. AirBnB and HomeAway were pricey since we were looking so last minute but we found this highly rated hotel a little south of the city-center. For more information on transport with Oktoberfest, click this link. By train, it is only 20 minutes and we figured we might as well save on our stay since we were indulging with our last-minute flights. Turns out this hotel has an incredible interior decor and service, #winning.
Definite Strengths- the room was on the fourth floor with a nice patio, heated bathroom floors, comfy queen bed, small kitchenette, and armoir. Perfect for the two of us. The hotel itself had a fantastic 10 euro breakfast buffet (it is so hard to find scrambled eggs in Germany) as well as an all day coffee bar. We would definitely stay here again. It is also five minutes walking distance of a bus stop and 7 minutes walking distance of a train station.
Other things to note is that public transit is necessary to get to the city center. Thank GOD for good public transportation. Not to mention we easily clocked 16,000-20,000 steps a day. If a city has great public transit, I won’t hesitate to stay a little out of the city, especially during a festival. We did that in Edinburgh during the Festival Fringe and that was one of the best decisions we made to save a little more.
MUNICH OKTOBERFEST DAY ONE
On Saturday, we met up with our friends at their AirBnb, a fifteen minute walk north from our place. We took a bus to Oktoberfest and entered the festival. WHAT AN ENERGY, oh my goodness. Honestly, I have no other way to compare it than to say it reminded me of the Triwizard tournament in Harry Potter or like a Quidditch match. Everyone was so excited to be there, in dirndle/lederhosen or not, and the tents were pitched up ready for us to enter! We did not buy any festival wear because it was 100+ euros but we weren’t out of place in our clothes so don’t feel pressured to dress up.
The first tent we went into was the Paulaner tent AKA the Gryffindor tent. We walked in to see thousands of people lining the long picnic tables, hundreds of people dancing on the tables or chugging beers, and seemingly everyone smiling and enjoying themselves fully. You couldn’t help but smile. We walked through the rows looking for a table as the four of us didn’t have a table reservation. We finally found a table that had some empty space and the kind Belgian gentlemen decked out in their lederhosen let us sit with them.
A second after I got comfortable on that bench a waitress slammed six huge liters of beer on the table and barked out the prices. IT WAS TERRIFYING. We paid her quickly and then just stared at these absolutely enormous beers. After a huge “PROST” (cheers in German) we started our journey. Each liter of beer is ~3 bottles of beer in case you cared about calories (eek!). It was a long process to finish one but we were in no rush.
LUNCH
After the beers, we headed to the Ratskeller in downtown Munich for a good, hearty, German meal. When our food finally got to us, it looked straight out of a German dream. Our table was covered in delicious smelling sausages (wurst), macaroni and cheese (spatzl), beer (lol), and very limited water.
PUB
After dinner we went to a German Pub called the Taphouse, had ourselves some more, you guessed it, beer (or a lemonade + beer in my case) and then called it a night. Tame enough right? And then day two happened.
MUNICH OKTOBERFEST DAY TWO
Sunday started out harmless enough. We had a delicious breakfast at the Cafe Glockenspiel across from the Glockenspiel (the mechanical storytelling tower which is incredibly underwhelming, similar to the copper little mermaid statue in Copenhagen). We then decided to walk to Oktoberfest…a forty five minute walk (husband loves walking) and started out at the Augustiner tent. OH man. I don’t even like beer, but that was really dang good beer.
To get a table for a group, you kind of start with part of one table and keep an eye out until you see another one open up and then BOOM take over the table. Augustiner was definitely my favorite. After Augustiner we went to Hacker Schorr, then we went somewhere else where I told off a bunch of rude Germans. For more details on this total takedown, we will just have to speak in person. Then I ate two plates of Spatzl, had eight glasses of precious water, and called it a night.
CONCLUSION
-I don’t want to drink any more beer for a very, very long time. But if I did, Augustiner would be my first choice.
-Get the German Hundelmeyer sweet mustard. It’s life changing. We brought back three 100 ml bottles (airport security safe for the win).
-Be wary of (short) Germans who’ve been drinking. They were consistently the rudest people we met.
-Go to Oktoberfest with a group of people who know how to let loose and have fun.
-Drink lots of water and eat lots of spatzel!
Oktoberfest is something you need to move from your “I’d like to” list to your “WE MUST DO THIS” list. Our trove of stories has gotten much richer after this event…I can’t wait to share it with you over a cup of coffee, or maybe even a beer, sometime.
