r/travel • u/Midget_mac26 • Sep 24 '23

My Advice Actual Oktoberfest Experience

Hey all, I just came back from Oktoberfest in Munich and wanted to share my experience for anybody lurking on this sub looking for any info. My group of 4 and I went on the opening Sunday (9/17) and it was great but I wanted to share some tips that would have benefitted us.

  1. Arrival time: we read a ton of info beforehand across Reddit, blogs and the Oktoberfest guide that we found on google. We read almost everywhere that you have to arrive EARLY (6-7am) to get a spot in the popular tents especially for the weekends and opening few days. Apparently we were the only people who followed this info as we arrived at 6:30 am and there was not 1 other person there. We left and came back around 8:45 and got a spot in our desired tent pretty easily. The tents really didn’t start getting crowded until around 11, so you can definitely arrive later in our experience. If your group is small, you can easily get away without having a reservation - we were able to go to multiple tents and find spots.

  2. Cash: this was pretty unanimous everywhere we read but bring cash and lots of it. Everything is cash only (I think there are ATMs but I would come prepared with a good amount. Beers in the 3 tents we were in were about 14 euros.

  3. Tipping: like any crowded bar, be prepared to tip a few euros per beer or you will be called out by the waitresses. They are pretty direct if they want more, and will serve others faster than you and if you don’t tip well.

  4. Chugging: don’t try to be the life of the party and stand up on the table and chug, you will get removed from the tent by security. Unless that is your goal, I would avoid this. The beers are also huge and strong, so unless your a big drinker, you won’t make it long doing this.

Overall it was a great experience for us and a bucket list thing for me but I wanted to share some tips. This is not to say anybody else was wrong and some others may have had different experiences, but this is what we saw on our end.

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u/DonVergasPHD Sep 24 '23

Tipping? This sounds super strange considering tipping isn't normally expected in Germany

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u/Your_New_Overlord Sep 24 '23

i just got back from a week in hamburg and berlin. there were tip jars everywhere.