Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany
Last year, I had the opportunity to celebrate Oktoberfest in Kitchener-Waterloo, Canada, which is the largest Oktoberfest outside of Germany. This year I stepped it up a notch and travelled to the city it originated from: Munich. While Canada and its German community do a fantastic job of putting together the Oktoberfest back home, seeing how the Germans run Oktoberfest was a completely different experience.
In Canada, Oktoberfest is a 9-day festival operated from a variety of different venues and German organizations. Unquestionably, the most popular day is the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium Student Night where the arena floor transforms into a multitude of beer stands, live music and tables. There’s even a parade that gets televised! The Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest has historically attracted 750,000–1,000,000 guests every year.
In Germany, Oktoberfest is a 3-week festival located in Munich that transforms an entire park into a BEER CARNIVAL with over 6,000,000 attendants every single year. It looks and feels like a theme park celebrating beer!
I’m talking roller coasters, swinging chairs, drop towers, Frisbee pendulums and bumper cars scattered across a park with tons of German food stands, souvenir shops and gigantic beer drinking tents that can house thousands of people each. Cover the park in tens of thousands of people — many of which wear traditional German outfits — and you have Oktoberfest in Munich.
Due to the enormous amount of people participating in this event, you need to be in the park before 9 a.m. if you expect to procure a table in a tent. Of course we arrived at the park around 11 a.m. and to no one’s surprise, there was nothing available. This was actually a good thing because if we were to have found a spot in a tent, we would’ve stayed there all day not wanted to forgo that spot. By not having a table to call our own, it allowed our group to explore the festival and see everything else Oktoberfest had to offer.
We purchased some 50 cl glasses from what was once a carousel (now a beer distribution hub) and ate a variety of pretzels, sausage and half chickens. After a few hours, we left the festival temporarily to drink at a local German bar. One of our American friends started singing “Olé, Olé, Olé” which caused the whole bar to burst into song. That caused someone else to start another chant, which lead to another individual commencing the chant right after. The chain of songs continued to build and we all continued to clang our mugs and drink along; great fun.
Eventually, we made our way back to the festival and really pushed to the front of a tent entrance. After all, the tents are the main attraction and we weren’t going back to France without the full experience. But being let through the doors was the easy part… you still have to search for a table once you’re in. You’d imagine with hundreds of tables both inside and outside the tent that finding at least one would be relatively easy, but it’s not. Groups don’t leave their table once they’ve sat down — they’re squatting for the night.
After a half hour, we finally found a group of people leaving and snatched their vacant table. We each ordered beer in the only size you can get — 1 litre — and cheersed to what was going to be a night of enormous alcohol consumption. The atmosphere was somewhat surreal as endless amounts of people conversed, laughed and drank together. If you’re daring, you can stand on a table and chug your full 1 litre stein with loud cheering from the people surrounding you. If you can’t finish though, be prepared to get booed and have pretzels thrown your way!
Then once the live music begins, everyone hops on their table and starts dancing. The majority of the songs were German so we just blabbered words to fit in which made for even more hilarity. As soon as German classics such as “Der Mai Ist Gekommen”, “Bier Her” or “Muss I Denn” started playing, people were getting reckless and at least 3 mugs at our table were shattered from people swinging in their glasses to cheer in celebration. The night continued on like this for hours. We had to enjoy ourselves because our Oktoberfest stay was confined to this day only. As such, we stayed in that tent all night and when the time was right, brought back “souvenirs” (the steins).
I nearly forgot to mention that since flights were so expensive to reach Munich during this peak period, the only cheap alternative was to drive. Two of our friends drove a full car with manual transmission for — get this — 14 hours just to get to Munich. To get back was about 12 and a half. We did go through Italy and Switzerland to get there, which were beautiful by the way, so the ride was actually quite bearable but it doesn’t change the fact that we spent more time in the car than we did at Oktoberfest. Was it worth it? Hell yeah! I’d do another full day in the car if it meant I could go again. But alas, the weekend we went was the last of the three weeks so if I’m to ever return, it wouldn’t be until next year.
While Canada’s Oktoberfest is quite fantastic, nothing compares to the sheer scale of insanity Germany gives you. The amount of work that goes into maintaining this 200 year old tradition is truly astonishing and will make you appreciate beer that much more. If you ever have the chance, do Oktoberfest in Munich. It’s seriously some of the most fun you’ll ever have.
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This blog entry is part of the publication Robert Cekan Travels & was originally written on October 13, 2012
Robert Cekan is a young entrepreneur and proud Hamiltonian. He is the founder of the Hamilton discovery website True Resident, as well as Cekan Group, a property management group. He is also a Hamilton REALTOR® with Ambitious Realty Advisors Inc., Brokerage and an active blogger.
For all of Robert’s projects, please visit robertcekan.com
