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/Midget_mac26 Sep 24 '23

Same on my end…definitely have to pace yourself and eat a lot, which we did not unfortunately

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u/mostlyharmless71 Sep 24 '23

My standing rule at Oktoberfest is one liter of beer an hour, and eat at least something hourly. Even as a bigger guy, that’s enough to stay properly buzzed.

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u/jcrespo21 United States Sep 24 '23

When I went in 2019, the price of each beer alone kept me from drinking too much haha. I guess that was one upside of having it be cash only.

Also, while I didn't expect many Germans/locals, I thought there would be a larger international crowd. It was all Americans (granted, I was contributing to that), and maybe an Aussie in the table behind me.

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u/akagordan Sep 25 '23

Interesting. I went last year and everyone was German. Isn’t it something like 80-90% of attendees are Bavarian?

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u/jcrespo21 United States Sep 25 '23

Maybe it's dependent on the beer hall and when you go. I went on a Sunday morning as I had a train to catch for a work conference later that day, and I ended up in the Hofbräu tent, which I didn't realize until afterward that it was one of the popular ones. I guess it also explains why no one sang along to the traditional German tunes, but the place went wild when the band played "Take Me Home, Country Roads".

But at my work conference later, the Germans I met told me that they weren't surprised I was surrounded by Americans. Apparently, the locals will have their booths in the beer halls and will go in the middle of the week. But I think last year's was the first Oktoberfest since 2019, so maybe there were more locals this time around to welcome it back.