Our visit to Munich was short and very centered around visiting Oktoberfest so our experiences were almost exclusively based on this event. All accommodations are very expensive as they are scaled up through the roof as there are an extra 4 million people visiting the city over the course of the festival, so we decided 2 nights should suffice to experience it. We had a long travel day to get there from Interlaken, arriving in the middle of the afternoon. We got settled and decided to take the S-Bahn into the festival area to get a feel for place before we spent a full day there the following day. The initial impression was overwhelming as there were more people in one area then we'd ever seen before including a lot of Germans from all over the country as well as people from all over the world mixed in. Almost all were dressed in traditional Bavarian outfits with the men sporting lederhosens and the women dirndls. We were not dressed up for the event yet but we realized it would be a necessity for the full experience the next day. The crowd included people of all ages from families with small children to old couples who I could imagine having attended the last 40 years. The most intoxicated individuals were all between 16-30, many of which appeared to have lost any one they had come with with no clue what was going on as they stumbled through the crowd bumping into everyone. We were both hungry and decided to dip inside a restaurant and order a half-chicken each as that is one of the main food options at the festival. Of course to fit in it must be accompanied with a 1-litre stein of beer for myself and glass of wine for Holly as a gluten-free alternative. We then continued on to the absolutely packed festival (it happened to be a German holiday that day to make it even crazier) to scope out some alternatives for beer tents to visit the next day including the Hofbrau tent, Hippodrome, Augustiner, etc.
We had ordered costumes to wear for the festival although Holly's did not arrive in time and mine was extremely tacky compared to the authentic outfits people were wearing. The next morning we went into a discount clothing shop underneath the apartment we were staying in and hit the jackpot with Bavarian outfits being cleared out as there was only a couple days remaining in the festival. Holly's was a very nice dirndl and my lederhosen looked very legit as well although I could have fit two of me inside of it. We were at the festival early to try to get a seat in a tent, arriving just after 11am. We went into the Hofbrau tent as this was one of the most famous. It was already packed but we narrowly missed a lineup about to form as they reached capacity. The atmosphere was amazing as we looked around to see 10,000 people with beer steins in their hands clinking glasses and having a great time. The band would come on sporadically and play one of the Bavarian tunes that was heard all over the festival to a huge response of cheering from the crowd. There were very few seats left as we looked around but we managed to squeeze in right between a group of Germans and a group of Italians who we partied with for the next few hours before we were kicked out at 3pm for all the people that had reservations. We had an excellent time and actually fit in pretty well with our outfits, even the Germans were impressed we dressed up for the 1 day. We then hung out with the Germans for a while before heading back for a nap and supper.
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| Hofbrau tent statistics |
Next we went to Salzburg, Austria.
Kevin
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