Oktoberfest In Munich
Travel Tips for Munich
Get used to people peeing everywhere. In four days we saw as many people relieving themselves in creative places.
Expect your train to be late. The Munich metro is generally prompt, but the Deutsche Bahn (DB) intercity trains are nearly always delayed.
The larger famous breweries make great beer, but they also make very good food. Consider eating at one of their Bräuhaus (brew house) restaurants for a delicious and fun meal.
There are tons of museums to visit, and many offer free or discounted admission! Check each museum’s website for specific dates and times.
Oktoberfest is free to enter and explore, but once inside nothing is free.
Our Travels In Munich
Munich was the most polarizing city we visited while traveling Europe. There were two big draws - the first being Oktoberfest. The world famous festival started to celebrate a royal wedding but is now famous for endless beer. The second was to visit my old roommate, Feng! We lived together for two years while at UT but I had never visited him in Germany. That gave me a lot of excitement for beer, friend time, schnitzel, and sausage. While Chandni was also excited for friend time, she was also excited to leave Munich before we even arrived! A city of beer and meat doesn’t appeal much to a vegetarian that hates beer. Our Munich visit went about as she expected outside friend time at home.
We stepped off our bus at Munich Central to enter a rowdy Saturday night. Oktoberfest was in full swing just down the road so the fun was spilling over. Nightlife was flashy, the streets were busy, so trying to find Feng in the middle of the chaos was next to impossible. Once we found him underground in the metro station we dodged the crowds and went straight home. That’s where we met one of his roommates and were introduced to the classic German toilet. I could describe the oddity of a German toilet here but maybe you Google that for educational purposes. Let’s just say it’s not something you expect after arriving from the States but I don’t deny that it works very well. Toilet aside, our plan was to visit Oktoberfest the next morning so we got to bed quickly right after Feng gave us our beer pitcher socks! If I still had an office job, I’d proudly wear them to work.
The next morning we joined the crowds to Oktoberfest. Turns out you can pretty much follow people with a morning beer in hand towards Oktoberfest if you’re ever unsure of how to reach the festival. If that doesn’t give you enough confidence, follow the lederhosen. Those in the traditional Bavarian outfits only head toward Oktoberfest in the morning.
The subways are so popular during Oktoberfest that Munich opens additional routes and hires officials to help direct tourist traffic metro stops across the city. Thousands of people descended on the fair grounds. There is only one entrance which turns into a funnel of people. We got hit with a string of bad luck starting before we even made it past the guards.
I was stopped at the main gate by one of the dozens of security guards. My pack violated the minimum size so I was refused entry. I was told to walk against the crowd to reach the bag holding tent, wait in line, and then pay €7 for staff to hold my bag. After waiting in line for a bit I returned to the main gate wading through a now much larger entry crowd. Trying to find Chandni and Feng felt like searching for a needle in a stack of needles. Somehow we all found one another through the crowd just inside the gate. First things first, we went straight to drink the classic beer of Oktoberfest in the Augustiner beer tent.
The guards at the tent asked us to toss our water bottles before entering their tent. That wasn’t going to happen because we were carrying nice Platypus bottles, but we agreed to leave them near the guards at the door while we drank inside. Outside water is allowed at Oktoberfest, but some tents won’t let you bring bottles inside because you could steal beer.
While I like beer, Chandni does not. However, to sit down in a tent you have to order something so we thought ordering her water would be a work around. Ordering that water in a beer tent turned into a €14 expense! A liter of water in the beer tent cost more than my apartment’s monthly water bill. Water and beer cost the same.
A little annoyed at the cost of water, we returned for our water bottles to explore a different tent. We found our bottles missing. That was where what was left of the fun promptly died. Not even a pretzel the size of our head could salvage things.
Overall Oktoberfest wasn’t what we hoped. Was it fun to people watch, listen to music, and try local beer? Definitely. However, losing our Platypus bottles and dramatically overpaying for water was a major buzz kill. We later learned locals typically enjoy a single beer at Oktoberfest and then venture out to a local beer garden outside the festival. That’s the move. If we returned I’d probably try a single new beer and visit more tents for the fun of exploring, but I’d then go to one of gardens outside the fest. The only exception would be going with a big group that loves beer, but seeing how I know only one person in Germany, that’s unlikely.
By far the best part of Munich was getting to spend time with Feng. Watching anime, sampling his instant food from China, and discovering some weirdly delicious Vietnamese food together in Munich felt like old times in college. There was a day he offered to show us the surfers in the park. Sure enough, we watched people in wet suits surfing waves in the English Garden. Outings aside, just sharing in his excitement to return home and see his loved ones was a blast! The next time we visit Feng he may be in China. Once that happens, it’ll be hard to find a reason for returning to Germany that we’re nearly as excited for. Every destination has something worth visiting, but we’ll have to find a new one in Germany.
