Reviews of Germany

One, two, three, drink! Every year it’s the same procedure: I don’t plan to go to the Oktoberfest, and come up with all sorts of excuses and reasons for not heading down to Munich – the train journey, the cost, the fact that it is almost impossible to get a seat inside a tent after 11am. And then I get a phone call from a couple of mates in England who tell me that they are booking a cheap flight to Frankfurt, and that I really ought to get cracking and organise a trip to the Oktoberfest. Yes, I really am that weak-willed! Despite all my protestations, I have been to the world’s biggest beer festival for the last three years, and I have to say that it has been thoroughly enjoyable every time.

So how did it all start? Well, the original Oktoberfest was a celebration of the marriage of Ludwig of Bavaria to Therese of Sachsen-Hildburghausen in 1810, and the festivities returned year after year, gradually gaining in notoriety to become the huge extravaganza that is now known the world over. Despite the name, however, the Oktoberfest now begins in the middle of September, and runs for 3 weeks – the visitor numbers were down a little this year, to just 5.5 million, and beer consumption slipped a little as well, dropping to a paltry 4.8 million litres!

What is there to do at the Oktoberfest? The main purpose of proceedings is obviously the consumption of copious quantities of the specially brewed festival beer at one of the 14 (yes, fourteen!) beer tents that are scattered around the Theresienwiese. Only the Munich breweries are allowed to have a presence at the Oktoberfest, and they all push the boat out more and more each year, designing bigger and better tents to cram in as many revellers as possible. The obvious ones to go for are Löwenbräu and Hofbräu, as these are (I think) the two biggest tents, but whatever you do, make sure to get there early.

And I do mean early – the doors open at 10am, and if you want to get a seat inside a tent then you absolutely have to be in place right from the start. This year, we arrived at the Hofbräu tent at 11am to find it packed to the rafters (mostly with Italians, oddly enough) and with standing room only left, right in the pit in the centre of the tent. We did manage to grab a table outside the front door though, and hung to it for dear life until 10pm that evening.

Unless you are prepared to stand, or squash up against some random Germans to grab a perch on the end of their table, you won’t be able to wander around the Theresienwiese doing a tent crawl. The best bet is to pick a tent, find a table and stay there. The beer itself costs 13.50DM per litre, served in a glass mug called a Maß (and this is a standard price set for all tents), but quite often you will find that the waitresses only carry 5DM coins for change, which means that they automatically work in a 1.50DM tip per litre that they serve. Cunning.

You don’t have to drink beer though – you might get a funny look but you can order soft drinks from the waitresses, who still amaze me every year by their ability to carry 8 litres of beer at a time, when I struggle to lift just the one. You can also enjoy some traditional Bavarian fodder at your table – huge pretzels, spicy sausage, onion bread, or the biggest gherkins you will ever see, all at about 3DM each. The speciality of the Oktoberfest is the ‘halbes Hendl’, or half a chicken, spit-roasted and eaten using your fingers. These cost 15DM each (or you can get half a duck for 30DM), and I recommend venturing out to one of the stalls selling these rather than ordering one in a tent, as the quality of chicken from the stalls is noticeably better.

While you are wandering round the Theresienwiese on the hunt for food, you should also have a go on some of the rides – there is a full set of fairground attractions, rollercoasters and dodgems to mess about on, all of which are great fun after a few beers! Just make sure that you leave a few people guarding the table while you are gone, otherwise you’ll never find a seat on your return. There are also cashpoints dotted around the area in case you run out of money after one Maß too many, but the queues are normally immense.

Getting to the Oktoberfest is easy enough: Munich is one of the biggest cities in Germany and you can fly there directly with BA, Lufthansa and Go, or fly into Stuttgart or Frankfurt and pick up a direct train down to the Bavarian capital from there. Once at Munich station, there are signs everywhere to tell you how to get to the Oktoberfest, but the underground station you need is Theresienwiese, on the U4 and U5 lines.

However, if you are planning to visit, you need to make plans well in advance – flights and trains are booked solid on all routes to Munich, and the city’s hotels are booked out weeks beforehand. I travelled down with 6 mates, and despite looking for accommodation a month in advance, we had to stay in Augsburg (40 minutes away from Munich by train), which was cheap enough but it was a bit of a chore getting back there at 10pm, having spent all day at the Hofbräu tent!

Basically, the Oktoberfest is a great place to go with a group of friends for a day or two – the atmosphere in the tents is generally amazing, and even if you can only find seats outside, you can still hear the music and the singing, and the huge numbers of people there just give the whole day a great party atmosphere. If you haven’t spent much time in Germany though, watch out for the beer, as it is a lot stronger than anything you will have drunk before! Will I be going back next year? Only time will tell...