We have wanted to visit Oktoberfest for a long time. Especially Vladimir, after the stories of his friends who have been attending this event for more than a year, wanted to personally experience all the charm of the beer "paradise". But we were lucky enough to get to the event only now. A general overview article about Oktoberfest, opening hours, tents, attractions and its history is available.
The festival takes place in Munich, on, then to visit it Russian tourists you need a Schengen visa. Therefore, you need to worry about obtaining a visa in advance, from 3 months to 2 weeks before departure. You can, of course, do it easier and buy tourist package to visit Oktoberfest. But we would not recommend doing this for the following reasons:
1. The average cost of such a tour for two costs from 80 thousand rubles (flight, accommodation with breakfast + one-day visit to Oktoberfest). Which, of course, is more expensive than an independent trip.
2. Independent travel more interesting and informative than hiking with a group, where everything is already decided for you - where to gather, where to go, what to see, etc.
Since the prices for accommodation in Munich skyrocket several times during the festival, we lived in Memmingen and traveled to Munich by train. About how to get from Memmingen to Munich cheaply, and what is the subtlety,.
The Oktoberfest holiday is, of course, the enjoyment of delicious beer, unforgettably tender grilled chickens and pretzels.
There are tents with a variety of Bavarian beers (Augustiner, Paulaner, Spaten, Franziskaner, Löwenbräu, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbräu) on the Teresa Meadow (the venue of the festival). Beer is poured and carried only in beer mugs, the volume of which is 1 liter. You simply will not find a smaller volume at Oktoberfest. The organizers of the holiday have introduced beer mugs under special control, as thousands of tourists are trying to quietly take them out as a souvenir trophy.
We hung out in the tent of our favorite Pauliner beer. It’s a pity that there are no unfiltered (live) beer in the tents, they sell only filtered beer. Already after the rollercoaster ride on a small street stall, we stumbled upon unfiltered beer.
On weekdays, beer is served in tents from 10 am to 10:30 pm. On weekends, you can taste Munich beer at Oktoberfest as early as 9 am.
In the tents you can also taste grilled chicken, pretzels, potatoes and Bavarian snacks. Each tent can accommodate up to 10,000 people. Large wooden tables are placed in the tents, each of which can easily fit 10-12 people. The best thing is to visit the company)). In the center of each tent there is a stage where musicians in national costumes play traditional Bavarian music. During breaks (rest), they, like everyone else, absorb beer in liter mugs.
It should be noted that almost all local visitors to the festival and its special fans come to the festival in national Bavarian costumes, and after a few mugs of foam, national songs and dances are sung and danced right in the aisles. Thanks to this, some special atmosphere of general celebration and fun is additionally formed. An exciting spectacle.
Modern attractions are everywhere on the street. We stood in line, by the way, the line moves very quickly, we went on a roller coaster with dead loop 1300 meters long and 60 meters free fall tower.
Also at every step you can see small street latches with souvenirs, snacks, sausages, shank, Bavarian cotton candy, gingerbread, roasted almonds and incredibly long hot dogs. Note, the most delicious that we have ever tried.
Although there were incredibly many people at the festival, we must pay tribute to the organizers, there are no queues for patches at all. Perhaps because there are so many of them.
In preparation for the train, we studied almost the entire Internet about the intricacies of the holiday and its visit. Literally on all sites the same, we note not true information- copy verbatim “At Oktoberfest, there are several rules that may surprise the “newcomers” of the holiday. For example, there are hours when the gates of beer tents are closed in order to avoid unnecessary overcrowding. And this is despite the fact that there are always some places in tents that cannot be reserved. So you should always come in advance, namely, on weekdays until about 14-30, and on weekends - until 11 in the morning. There is also an unspoken rule that once leaving the tent is unlikely to get back into it on the same day. Unless by persuading the guards or by presenting evidence of the reserve. But no one can guarantee that.".
Now in order:
1. No, those hours. All tents are open for free visiting until 17:00. And there is no need to hurry to come to the festival in the morning, as we did. At any time from the opening of the tent until 17:00, you can safely go to any tent you like and take any free place, of which there are always a lot until exactly 17:00. A sign is pasted on each table that the table is reserved from 17:00 or from 17:30. It is after this time that the entrance to the tents is carried out by tickets. You can buy them in advance on the Oktoberfest official website. There you can choose a tent, a row and a table. There are many sites on the Internet offering such tickets, but you should not buy them - it will be more expensive. Yes, and they are needed, as we concluded when visiting the holiday with a company. 2-4 people can do without them. In addition, after an hour and a half, such tickets will be offered on the street, at a price of 5 euros per ticket. At least we were offered five times.
2. The rule described above about leaving the tent once is also incorrect. We went out and went into the same tent ten times and not a single guard moved his eyes. Still ... imagine remembering all the thousands of people leaving and entering back to one guard - it's simply unrealistic. In addition, smoking in tents is prohibited, everyone goes outside to smoke.
So, before 17:00 you go to any tent you like, take a free place. There is a menu on each table, you choose, the beer is over)). Waitresses walk between the rows, you place an order with them, and literally in 2-5 minutes, your order is already on your table. By the way, you need to pay as soon as the order was brought, and so for each order, for each mug of beer.
Beer in tents costs 9.80 euros. If you give 10 euros or 20 for two mugs, then no one will bring you change of 20-40 cents. It is better to worry about this in advance and have small money for exchange.
After 17:00 in the tents begins a real holiday! And here is the entrance only by tickets and strictly for their reserved tables. And that is only for the first 2 hours, after that everyone enters the tent and the passages are simply forgotten.
We took a place on the street near the entrance to the tent. There are also menus and waiters walking around. By the way, you did the right thing! Since, when the cop is no longer at the tables on the street, the guards at the tent hang a red ribbon, after which it will not be possible to approach the tables at the tents. How many people stood behind the red ribbon ...
After a couple of hours, everyone was allowed into the tents. We went into the tent with our liter mugs of beer, like hundreds of other visitors, stood at one of the tables. Cheerful national music was playing in the tent (there was also the song "Moskau", groups - Dschinghis Khan), dancing right on the benches at the table, standing on the benches and dancing. A company of German guys was sitting at the table. Yet alcohol and celebration unite. We quickly got to know each other and already had fun together. Although neither of them know a word of Russian, I speak a little English from school, Vladimir also speaks German from school. But it was fun and drunk. The Germans taught us to sniff tobacco, and Vladimir taught them to dance)).
Oktoberfest is a real holiday for adults and children. More than 30 rides, costume parades and other events await the guests of the festival.
Oktoberfest events
The main events recurring from year to year at Oktoberfest include the procession of the owners of beer tents, the opening ceremony of the first beer barrel and the costumed procession. The first morning of the Oktoberfest celebration begins with a beautiful procession during which festive horse teams carry barrels of beer through the center of Munich to Theresa Meadow. This is followed by the opening ceremony of the first beer barrel. At 12 noon, the acting Mayor of Munich drives a tap into the first barrel of beer. When the tap is completely driven in, the burgomaster shouts "O'zapft is!", Which means "Uncorked!". After that, Oktoberfest is considered officially open. On the first Sunday of the holiday, a costume procession takes place. People in historical and national costumes walk from the Bavarian parliament building to Teresa Meadow. Officials of the city and Bavaria, representatives from Austria, Switzerland, Northern Italy and other countries, as well as orchestras, shooting societies and festive horse teams take part in the procession. On the festival's official website, you can find the schedule of Oktoberfest events. It is also worth mentioning that you can get to the parade of breweries on the first Saturday of the festival and the costume procession on the first Sunday only by pre-booking a ticket. Ticket prices for 2015 are 24.5 euros and 35 euros respectively.
Oktoberfest rides
More than 30 attractions for children and adults are presented at Oktoberfest. They work from 10-00 to 24-00. Here you can ride both traditional leisurely carousels and modern attractions, looking at which is already breathtaking. These include:
- Alpina Bahn - roller coaster without " dead loops". The trailers accelerate to a speed of about 80 km / h, and visitors can feel the state of weightlessness for a few seconds.
- Cyberspace - made in the likeness of a giant pendulum, which, swinging, reaches a height of about 47 meters. The cabin, in which 8 visitors are placed, swings freely around its axis. Anyone over 140 cm tall can ride.
- The Frisbee is another pendulum variation with a disc-shaped cockpit that seats up to 40 people. The maximum angle of inclination of the disk, which also rotates around its axis, is 180 degrees.
- Olympia Looping is a roller coaster named after the five dead loops present on this attraction and reminiscent of the Olympic rings. The trailers here accelerate to a speed of 100 km / h, and the total length of the path is 1250 meters.
photo: Andreas Steinhoff
People with a weak vestibular apparatus are better off just standing next to these rides and taking a ride on the Riesenrad ferris wheel. It raises the cabins to a height of 50 meters, offering stunning views of the entire Oktoberfest and Munich.
- Mayor Christian Uhde showed the best result in opening the first beer barrel in 2006 - 1 hit. The worst result was shown in 1950 by Thomas Wimmer, who introduced this tradition.
- on the official Oktoberfest website there is a meadow barometer ( Wiesnbarometer ), which shows the occupancy of the tents
- in a tent Fischer-Vroni every second Monday of the holiday gathers representatives of sexual minorities
- the turnover of the holiday is about 500 million euros
- The festival is attended by approximately 7 million people
- medical care is provided by the Bavarian Red Cross. For people in need of emergency care, there is a special room and even a small operating room.
- there are special family days on the holiday, during which the prices for attractions are reduced
- visiting Oktoberfest with prams is allowed until 18-00
- for families with small children, a family square (Familienplatz) is organized, which has attractions for the smallest, as well as parking for strollers, changing places, tables and high chairs for feeding children
- Oktoberfest beer mugs are the most popular object of theft during the celebration
How to get to Oktoberfest
Oktoberfest takes place in Munich, where many flights regularly fly from many Russian cities. Most cheap ticket from Moscow to Munich on the Aviasales website on September 18, 2015 can be bought for only 9278 rubles.
Public transport to Teresa Meadow, where Oktoberfest takes place, is best reached by metro (U-Bahn) or train (S-Bahn). The nearest metro station to Oktoberfest is called Theresienwiese. It can be reached by lines U4 and U5. However, given the number of people who want to get to Theresienwiese on this day, it is better to use the U3 and U6 lines and get to the Goetheplatz or Poccistrasse stations, and walk from there. Take the train lines S1 and S8 to the Hackerbrücke station, from there walk about 10 minutes to Theresienwiese.
Where to stay for Oktoberfest
Munich has a developed transport network, so you can search for a hotel or apartment outside the city center. This will save on cost and eliminate noise. big city. The cheapest option on September 18 is 32 euros per person per night. The most expensive - 600 euros. Roomguru has more than 500 hotels and apartments in Munich: choose yours and discover the best the best holiday Autumn in Germany - Oktoberfest.
Yesterday I was at Oktoberfest. Professional nerd programmer, that is me, in Once again made sure that commerce inevitably destroys the spirit of a good folk festival. Beer festival and Oktoberfest are as incompatible concepts as comfortable shoes and crocs. About why there is no beer at Oktoberfest - under the cut!
Oktoberfest takes place in a huge area near the center of Munich. It originated in the 19th century as a folk festival, but somehow miraculously stood out from a series of similar beer festivals and became a global tourist event. With all the disadvantages of a multi-million dollar business enterprise.
Before going to Oktoberfest, I left the motorcycle in the yard of a friend so that I could get drunk and go home drunk on the subway. (I also left my camera at home, so all the photos are from my instagram.) But it was not possible to achieve the desired state at the O-fest.
So, revelation number one: it is very difficult to buy beer at O-fest. To sweetly cling to the glass edge of an ice glass, you must first take a seat. Each visitor is tied to one seat. If you want a beer, sit down. Finding a free seat at the festival, which is attended by 6.5 million people from all over the world, is not easy. The organizing committee provides benches in a huge tent (very squeaky!), or on the street next to the tent. For some reason, the latter are called beergarten, although there was not a single tree at the entire festival. Camping sites are as popular as the new iPhone. People come to take places at dawn. By 10 am, the tents are usually rammed down and new people are not allowed inside. Those who, by hook, by crook, or with a Euro-bribe, got into the tent, can no longer leave it, since it will be impossible to return here, coming out from under the tarpaulin canopy. A typical day at Oktoberfest is spent sitting in one place, on an orange oak bench from the very morning until the strength leaves the body. There are a lot of tents at the festival, according to the number of breweries, but by lunchtime they all hang the inscription "the tent is full, the entrance is closed" above the entrance.
To give you an idea of what the festival area looks like, here is a photo from Wikipedia. The elongated houses in the left half of the frame are the same beer tents, each of which belongs to a different brewery.
Revelation number two: you can’t walk around the festival with beer. If luck smiled at you, and the Cerberus guard let you inside the tent, where you hastily ordered a beer, left a generous tip and ate a half-meter pretzel, then you will soon get bored. You can order beer again, eat pretzel again and order beer again. With a large group of friends, this will not be a problem, but if your company is less than four people and you see each other often, then topics for conversation will soon end. You can’t take a beer and go shoot at a shooting range or ride an attraction. Beer will need to be left in that tent and exactly at the table where you bought it. On the street you will want beer again, but the bridges are burned into the former tent, and in any other tent you need to repeat the procedure of standing in the crowd and putting pressure on the guard. It's easier to go to a deli and buy a bottle of beer there.
To have fun at Oktoberfest, it is better to get together with a large group of friends, reserve a place in a tent in advance and spend the whole day under the roof. For the reserve you need to pay a deposit: 50 euros per person. A liter glass of beer costs 10 euros, meaning a deposit requires the person to have a nosebleed but drink 5 liters of beer. Or he drank four liters of beer and ate half a grilled chicken. The tents have a big stage and many, many thousands of places to sit. Already after dinner, dancing on the tables begins in the tents. From the side of a sober visitor who would be glad to get drunk, but did not find an empty bench, dancing in a tent looks wild. Another thing, if you get drunk beforehand! But there will be no beer until you sit down. The harsh truth of the O-fest.
Busty beauties, delivering seven to eight beers per approach, have been working with drunken men since early morning. By evening, they finally go wild. There are legends about work at the O-fest. Allegedly, per day, waiters earn 500 euros in tips. Part of this income was achieved by brazen extortion: when paying for a beer, the waitresses do not hesitate to snap back “no change”, or indignant “where is my tip?”.
The approach to the tents is cordoned off with red and white ribbons, and there is a guard at each entrance. An irregular working day also awakens a beast in him: he pushes and yells at the crowd of teetotalers, who are pressing against the checkpoint with their chest, dreaming of getting into the cherished tent. Pleasure is not for everyone.
Without a reserved table, the path to beer is closed.
The limited access to the tents at the O-Fest also has one advantage: the people walking around the festival grounds are sober. The one who got to a mug of beer (read: took a place in the tent in the early morning) can no longer leave the tent, so he does not eat sausages on the street and does not ride on attractions. The atmosphere in the festival area is surprisingly calm and safe. There are very few uncontrolled drunkards, which is surprising, given that beer is drunk in liter containers, and the deposit requires 5 liters of beer per person. From time to time, an ambulance passes through a crowd of people with bananas in chocolate and cotton candy in their hands.
My impression of the O-fest: it's not a beer festival. They have everything but beer. Awesome attractions, delicious sweets, excellent sausages, funny folk costumes, but no beer. I'm used to a different type _ beer _ festivals. Perhaps my view would have been different if I had not walked around the territory sober. I wanted to get drunk, honestly! Who would have thought that it would be so difficult to get drunk on beer at a beer festival.
On Saturday at 5 o'clock we had a table booked for Oktoberfest in the beer pavilion Hacker-Pschorr. My first thought after I squeezed inside was: "Damn! I'm in India again!" The number of people per square meter went off scale beyond any reasonable limits. In the middle of the evening, hiding from the crowd, I locked myself in a cubicle in the men's room just to be alone for at least 3 minutes. I could not stand it for more than two hours in this madness and fled to the hotel at 7 pm...
On the outskirts of the festive glade, all the streets were packed with masses of people flowing for the holiday:
If on Thursday we walked to the pavilion for only 20 minutes, today we fought our way through for an hour and a half. Here student skills of riding in the Moscow metro came in handy. I tactfully helped myself with my elbows and tried not to lose sight of my friends:
We ordered tickets back in May and got inside the pavilion without any problems, looking sympathetically at the "free riders" waiting for someone to come out so they could get inside:
The pavilion was filled with people:
It was difficult to move around, and some men carried their ladies on their shoulders:
In Germany, smoking in restaurants is prohibited, but it is possible in tents. These giant beer pavilions are equated to tents, and inside it is smoky to such an extent that it stings your eyes and hangs an ax at the very time:
We booked a table on the balcony and it was a little more free here:
The first thing we ordered was a beer.
And snacks:
The price of a mug of beer at Oktoberfest is quite high - 8 and a half euros, but here it is customary not to finish drinking. If the waiter brought you another beer, then the previous mug automatically becomes "stale" and is given to the waiter. It is customary to hold the mug in a special way. First, stick your palm inside the handle, and then bend your fingers:
Having quenched my thirst, I went down, "to the people." Chaos reigned here. In the center of the hall, the orchestra was drinking, periodically interrupted by German marches and chants:
Traditional chicken was cooked in the kitchen:
Waiters served food on large trays:
It was difficult to move even in the aisles:
I had to constantly look under my feet, as many were "not well", and they did not have time to push their way to the toilet. There were only 2 toilets for the entire giant pavilion, where more than 10,000 people drank beer. Women had to queue for at least 40 minutes, and many of them tried to get into the men's room, from where they were periodically dragged out by security officers.
There were only 6 stalls in the men's restroom. In each of them stood 3-4 men and 2-3 girls, staring at the men murmuring at the urinals. 20 seconds after the next lucky man got into the booth, they began to frantically break on the door to him and in every possible way urge him on with loud cries.
Strongly drunk visitors danced on the benches:
Some of them could hardly stand on their feet:
The fun was in full swing, and the waiters were constantly bringing new beer:
