Octoberfest

gucci

Hi guys, i know its crazy early in the year (maybe not!) but im thinking about going to octoberfest for 3 or 4 days, looking at flights to munich on aer lingus seems reasonable enough. Has anyone been there before?? Would you have any advice about accomodation, what its like etc??

BeerNut

I went a couple of years ago. There's an account on my blog here. I booked my hotel in February and was lucky to get anything anywhere near the festival grounds.

The whole thing is one of the most spectacularly vulgar things I've ever seen. Imagine closing time in Temple Bar, every day, from 2pm to midnight. It's crowded, loud, smoky, corporation-dominated, expensive and absolutely chock full of extremely drunk people. What it isn't is a cheery, easy-going, wander-in-and-have-a-beer fun fest. It's serious business in every sense of the word.

That said, if you are going to spend any time living on the planet Earth, it's something you ought to do once.

Brockagh

BeerNut wrote:

I went a couple of years ago. There's an account on my blog here. I booked my hotel in February and was lucky to get anything anywhere near the festival grounds.

The whole thing is one of the most spectacularly vulgar things I've ever seen. Imagine closing time in Temple Bar, every day, from 2pm to midnight. It's crowded, loud, smoky, corporation-dominated, expensive and absolutely chock full of extremely drunk people. What it isn't is a cheery, easy-going, wander-in-and-have-a-beer fun fest. It's serious business in every sense of the word.

That said, if you are going to spend any time living on the planet Earth, it's something you ought to do once.

I'd agree completely - it's practically lawless. All the Irish, English, Aussies and Kiwis go to the Hoffbrau tent and get trousered. They actually spill most of their beer. I was living there at the time, so accomodation wasn't a problem.

Munich is a great place to go when the beer fest is not on. It is an experience , though, to go when the Octoberfest is in full swing. Not my kind of thing, though.

BeerNut

Brockagh wrote:

I'd agree completely - it's practically lawless.

I read somewhere that the city fathers like to draw a discreet veil over the number of rapes and serious assaults that happen during Wies'n.

Yet despite the lawlessness, it's quite horribly rule-bound once you're inside: tables have to be vacated if they've been booked for corporate entertaining (which most of them have); you can't get a drink if you don't have a seat and heaven help you if you decide while drinking that you'd like to move to another table. I got a severe ticking off for that one, and sent back to my place beside the loud cigar smoker who arrived after me.

munchkin_utd

BeerNut wrote:

I read somewhere that the city fathers like to draw a discreet veil over the number of rapes and serious assaults that happen during Wies'n.

Heres the stats for all to see from the Munich Police website (in german only:( ), so you cant really say anyone is hiding anything to be fair.
Any statistics must also be put in the perspective that there are over six million visitors to the octoberfest, pretty much the entire population of the republic and northern ireland combined, all on the batter in 7 big tents!!!
If it happened in Ireland I think it'd be a thousand times worse!

http://www.polizei.bayern.de/muenchen/news/presse/aktuell/index.html/24325

Quick Summary(in english):
756 arrests in total
294 assults of which 161 were serious
30 (reported) sexual assults [compared to 30 the year before] of which the majority was grabbing breasts or exhibitionism.
407 thefts, pickpocketing and the likes.

DonJose

Been to 9 Oktoberfests in a row when I lived in Munich, great crack.

pdebarra

It's absolutely horrible. My friends and I had a very unpleasant experience there. Oh, I'm not sorry I went - everyone should, at some stage.

"Imagine closing time in Temple Bar, every day, from 2pm to midnight." - that about sums it up. It is NOT pretty. And nor are the waitresses.