The Local's guide to Oktoberfest
Published: 15 Sep 11 11:55 CET

Looking to head to Munich this year for Oktoberfest? The Local has put together a guide to the world’s biggest beer bash that might get you out of Bavaria alive.

Welcome to Oktoberfest!

But be warned this isn’t just a bunch of party tents with lots of decent beer. No, by deciding to travel to this famous Volksfest, you’ve agreed to have the entire concept called Germany crunched into your skull by a sadomasochistic Bavarian mistress. She’s a pagan goddess with a lion at her heel, and in your hazy drunkenness she’ll indoctrinate you with all the wrong stereotypes about this country.

She’ll strap you down, peel back your eyelids and show you a heady mix of beer, breasts, leather, meat, and Bavarian bourgeois superiority. If you’re lucky, maybe she’ll even slap a dark green felt hat on you and take you on a whirlwind tour of the region’s prized “laptops and Lederhosen” economy as you belt down another Maß. And then she will release you to stagger home, hung-over, sweaty, full of misinformation, but most likely happy and content.

History

Conceived in 1810 as a celebration of the marriage of King Ludwig to some innocent young princess named Therese, the original Oktoberfest was an organized tournament of military horse races on the Wiese, or meadow, where it’s been held ever since. After a few years everyone realized that horse racing was really boring compared to drinking beer from chalices the size of your head, and the greatest folk party in the world was born.

In 1850 the allegorical statue Bavaria was unveiled on the Wiesn, and from then on, this 20 metre-high Valkyrie-like figure, accompanied by her royal lion, has presided over the proceedings. With that buxom pagan goddess standing guard, it quickly became clear that this was where the Bavarians would come for annual relief from their Catholic consciences. This was the Sin City of yore, outside the jurisdiction of the Church. By the end of the 19th century, the first grilled chicken stands were set up, and now almost every animal on God’s green Earth is impaled on a rough stick and roasted over a beech-wood fire at Oktoberfest.

Cultural significance

Bavaria’s greatest cultural export, Oktoberfest has a strange hold on Germany and the rest of the world. Sure, other parts of the country have their own grotesque folk festivals – the Catholic Rhineland goes in for its pre-Lent Karneval and secular Berlin used to have its bare-nippled techno party the Love Parade. But the Bavarians decided to fill that barren party gap between midsummer and Christmas with an unparalleled Dionysian orgy more than two centuries ago. And Oktoberfest’s subsequent global success has strengthened German stereotypes everywhere.

Occasionally, you might meet a northern German peeved that his cultural identity has been hijacked by the Oktoberfest, but a glance at the TV during the next fortnight will show you very few Germans actually embarrassed by the shameless debauchery on display. Daily coverage will consist of gleeful middle-aged chat show hosts lurching around Käfer’s, the celebrity tent, mistaking young starlets in dirndls for waitresses, then forcing large, spongey blue and orange microphones into the faces of drunken B-Listers. Even the regular German newsreaders giving their daily updates from the studio will drop their wonted sobriety and smile indulgently – as their eyes gleam momentarily with sex.

It’s a garish mix of medieval imagery – such as whole oxen roasting on a spit – and naked commercial opportunism. Every year, the price for a litre of beer rises another 40 or 50 cents and it broke €9 for the first time this year. But that hasn’t stopped Oktoberfest from becoming a concept known around the world. These days it’s something people celebrate on fields in autumn in any country where beer is legal. It’s become a global movement, a state of mind, where every citizen of the Earth can release their inner Bavarian.

Local pride with global reach

Much to their credit, the Bavarians do not begrudge the fun to the swarms of tourists that descend onto the Wiesn each year. There is, after all, a theatrical spirit behind the funny traditional costumes and the outsize beer-glass props that appeals to most people. Americans, Australians, Italians, Japanese, and countless others are the audience for this big show. There’s no mistaking Munich’s pride here – it’s a tour de force in local patriotism.

It’s at Oktoberfest that Bavarians betray their secret desire for independence. The state’s special history as a sovereign kingdom, its cultural and religious differences to the rest of Germany, burst from every true blue Bavarian’s chest.

Pride in the obscure traditions of Oktoberfest never seems to diminish: genuine joy breaks out when Munich’s mayor cracks open the first barrel and cries, “O’zapft is!” as the foam hisses into the first mug. Then there’s the Trachtenumzug, a seven-kilometre parade of 8,000 people in traditional folk dress. It’s a mad, ornate pageant of marching bands, hunting clubs, and liveried coaches, led by the dignitaries of Bavaria and Munich and the Münchner Kindl – a kind of Oktoberfest prom queen chosen from the city’s social scene for both her comeliness and her knowledge of Bavarian history.

It all makes Oktoberfest a Bavarian juggernaut unlikely to be stopped anytime soon. The festival’s statistics are consistently mindboggling. In 2007, 6.2 million people consumed 6.9 million litres of beer (a new record), over 140,000 pairs of sausages, and over half a million roast chickens.

So drop any prissy opposition you might have and realize that scoffing at this touristy, foolish monster of fun is pointless. Any protests will be roundly drowned out by the brass oompah bands and the roaring plastic lions. The pagan mistress is about force you to join in.

Oktoberfest – the food

The Local's Oktoberfest guide tucks into some the finer victuals on offer.
The food at the Oktoberfest is a lot subtler than you think. Okay, maybe not in the big tents. The chefs’ guiding credo there usually amounts to wedging a stick through anything with four legs, fins or feathers and burning it. But then if you spend your whole Oktoberfest in the big tents you are obviously someone who enjoys life’s coarser pleasures.

That's fine for some, but there are other, more refined gourmands than you – people who come to the festival with a schedule of what rich, heavy, Bavarian delicacies they are going to shovel into themselves and when. True, these people often don't make it through the two weeks without a heart attack, but emergency services workers at the festival should earn their keep too, right?

The connoisseurs hunt their delicacies in the smaller tents – those with capacities measured in the hundreds rather than the thousands. Here are a few of the best.

Chicken and Duck

The chicken might well have been the first animal to be sacrificed at the altar of Oktoberfest. The original grilled chicken stall was set up in 1881. Now there are six medium-to-small tents dedicated to the fiery demise of poultry, each with their own specialities. Hendl- und Entenbraterei Heimer, for example, encrust their ducks with a blend of herbs and spices that is so legendary it might as well be a Bavarian state secret. It comes with a not quite so unique celery salad.

Sausages

Only at Oktoberfest will you find a special tent for sausages. Though it's not so much a tent as a Disney-fied version of an old Bavarian townhouse. You get the idea – two storeys leaning all quaintly to the side. It is called Zur Bratwurst. This means “To The Grilled Sausage,” which is perhaps the simplest and best name for a restaurant ever. They do pork, veal, and ox-meat sausages, plus those traditional Bavarian tiddlers.

Veal

If this is your first Oktoberfest, and you have no qualms about devouring cute baby cows, then your lucky day has come. Able's Kalbs-Kuchl is a brand new tent, and it offers enough veal to make an animal rights activist give up on the intrinsic goodness of humanity. Of course, unless you've had a veal Wiener Schnitzel, you've not had a veal Wiener Schnitzel at all. It's veal-ly good. Oh, you know what we mean.

Desserts – Kaiserschmarrn or Dampfnudel

If you've ever had a barium meal, you'll have an idea of what a Dampfnudel feels like. If you haven't, Wikipedia “gastrointestinal series” when you get a chance, and in the meantime, be very cautious if anyone offers you a Dampfnudel. The “Nudel” part of the word is very misleading. It is not a noodle at all. It is, in fact, a giant lump of uncooked dough, thinly disguised with a sprinkling of powdered sugar. If you eat it, you will have to lie still and digest like an anaconda for a while. If you can't go without dessert, then head to Café Kaiserschmarrn. It's hard to miss. It has two oddly sized minaret-like towers on it, and they're calling you to pray to the god of cake. The place’s namesake Kaiserschmarrn is a delicious dessert akin to a shredded pancake covered in sugar and jam.

Oktoberfest – the main tents

The Local's Oktoberfest guide tours the best of the big tents.

Hippodrom

Festooned in primary colours like a drugged-up circus impresario's vision of utopia, the Hippodrom is the Oktoberfest at its most garish and most glamorous. Enter here and you will be sealed inside a giant beach ball of debauchery. Though it is one of the smallest of the big tents, this only heightens the intensity. There's a champagne bar where the sexually unattached tend to hang out, and it has become a ghetto for slightly incongruous tourist-celebrities - Paris Hilton and Eva Padberg have both dirndled themselves up here in the last few years. More familiar German glitterati like Boris Becker and those TV-hosts whose names you can never remember are also regular patrons. Music is provided by the regular band Happy Hippo. Whatever that name suggests to you is true.

Hofbräu-Festzelt

For those who consider the Hofbräuhaus in central Munich too intimate, low-key and artsy, the brewery’s tycoons created this tent just for you. It's an immense, raging cavern of Bavarian-ness – the Hofbräuhaus to the power of a kazillion. A huge brass-band, augmented with vocalists and electric guitars, screams uninterrupted for hours at a time, and this venue has become the base-camp for most Americans and Australians. Still, rural Bavaria is literally inserted into the Hofbräu-Festzelt: according to the managers, Margot and Günter Steinberg, an entire field of hops is used to decorate it.

Schottenhamel

This is the keeper of the spark that ignites the thousands of barrels all around. Except it's not gunpowder that explodes here, but liquid gold, streaming into gullets and displacing minds. This proud tent is more tradition-conscious than some of the others. It is the home of the ceremony where the mayor of Munich taps the first barrel – with blows from his Conan-esque hammer - signalling the opening of the Oktoberfest. It has earned this honour by virtue of being the oldest of the regular tents, and its management is still in the hands of the venerable Schottenhamel family. The traditional food served here is heavy, large, and very, very good.

Löwenbräu-Festhalle

At some point, the famous Löwenbräu brewery, makers of maybe the finest Bavarian beer, decided that it wasn't enough just to have lions on every glass, barrel, flag, and tent pole in this place. They decided to make the foreign tourists understand what their beer was named after by installing a 4.5 metre plastic lion at the entrance to their tent. It roars – some would say belches – into the throbbing crowd every few minutes just so you don't forget where you are. But with any luck, you might actually find some actual locals from Munich in this tent, as it is the traditional meeting point for fans of the city's second, more traditionally working class, football team – 1860 München – also known as the “Lions.” Beer still costs plenty though.

Ochsenbraterei

Perhaps ever since you were a boy you've wanted to tear roasted ox meat off a spit with your bare teeth like a Viking. You probably won't get a chance to do that here either, as the continually roasting creatures are hung tantalizingly out of reach, but at least you can eat oxen in every imaginable form. There is even an ox-brunch plate (€28.50), where lots of cuts are offered to you at once, like some nightmarish vision of meaty hell. You can even find out the name and the weight of the animal you are eating, as if they were poor sinners serving purgatory in the flames, and you are their tormenting demons.

Oktoberfest – the traditions

The Local's Oktoberfest guide delves into the leathery world of Bavarian tradition.
The Oktoberfest has adopted what is could be somewhat cynically known as the “Irish Pub” attitude to tradition – that is: “Look, we Bavarians are the salt of this beautiful earth. Aye, we know a party when we see one, and aye, hand over that there credit card for your vat of beer.” Not that the Bavarians don’t take their traditions seriously. Earnest fun is invested into their rituals and the peasant costumes like Lederhosen, meaning you’re supposed to laugh with them, not at them.

Bavarians are also big on parades. It all starts 10:45 am on Saturday morning, with the opening parade of 1,000 brewers, barmaids and other assorted employees of the booze industry onto the Wiesn, all led by the Münchner Kindl, a sexy young lass on a horse who has been chosen as the official “ambassador” of this year’s Oktoberfest. Carriages heavily laden with the brewers and their families, plus their own weight in flowers, trundle merrily across Munich and onto the meadow. Pop-brass music from each tent’s respective band accompanies every hoof-step. Then, at midday, the mayor taps the first barrel, gives an incomprehensible Bavarian cry, and the Olympics of Drinking is officially open.

The Trachtenumzug

Having warmed up with this solemn little pageant, the real deal starts on Sunday, at 10 am. That’s when a crowd of up to 8,000 costumed representatives of various clubs from all over Munich, Bavaria, Germany, and even parts of Europe gather on the banks of the Isar to the east of the city and march merrily towards the Oktoberfest grounds to the west in the Trachtenumzug. There are stag-hunting clubs, sports clubs, craftsman’s clubs, huge ornate floats, the inevitable marching bands, and clusters of Swiss, Austrian, Croatian, Italian and Polish people dressed in extremely expensive outfits to look like what their native peasants used to. It’s all televised by public broadcaster ARD – so be sure to set your video recorder!

Oktoberfest – the beer
The Local's Oktoberfest guide chugs some of the Bavarian tipple fueling this whole shindig.
There are six Oktoberfest breweries. Six and only six. And they are all Bavarian.

If some Beck's representatives showed up one day and asked to set up a little stall at the entrance, they'd be condemned according to ancient law without trial and taken to a Munich prison, where they'd have to share a cell with a frisky wild Bavarian boar that had been captured in the forest “within the last month.” Okay, that was all made up, but Bavaria's attitude to beer has always been ruthlessly litigious.

The famous Reinheitsgebot (purity law) was introduced in 1516, and is still heralded as the world's first consumer protection law, though the modern adherence to the three ingredients (hops, barley-malt and water), is subject to myth and marketing. It was followed by the Brauordnung of 1539, which ruled that you could only brew beer between September and April. But that clearly didn’t last as long as the purity law.

These six breweries have mischief on their minds when October comes around, for they infuse their Oktoberfest brews with more alcohol than their regular output. On top of this, connoisseurs say that Oktoberfest beer is brewed lighter, sweeter, and less carbonated, to make it slide down all those throats with greater ease. To ensure that after Oktoberfest the transition back to your regular beer runs smoothly, the special festive brews are made available in supermarkets and in many of Munich's regular bars and restaurants.

Four of the six breweries have their own major tent at the Oktoberfest, while the others are heavily represented everywhere else. According the aforementioned connoisseurs, there are apparently differences between them, so here they are:

Augustiner-Bräu-Oktoberfestbier: 6 percent alcohol. Available in - Augustiner-Festhalle and Fischer-Vroni. The only Oktoberfest beer that still comes from wooden kegs. Everyone loves this one – except the people that prefer the others, of course.

Löwenbräu-Oktoberfestbier: 6.1 percent alcohol. Available in - Löwenbräu Festzelt, Schützenfestzelt. This one is bottom-fermented, light, sweet, and with a spicy aroma.

Hofbräu-Oktoberfestbier: 6.3 percent alcohol. Available in – Hofbräuzelt. According to the Hofbräu people, this one has a “slightly bitter taste” best enjoyed in combination with a big pile of grilled meat and dumplings.

Paulaner-Oktoberfestbier: 6 percent alcohol. Available in - Winzerer Fähndl, Käfers Wiesnschänke, Armbrustschützenzelt, Nymphenburg Wein- und Sektzelt. One reviewer said this brew was “malty, with good quilting, and a spicy finish.”

Spaten-Oktoberfestbier: 5.9 percent alcohol. Available in - Hippodrom, Schottenhamel, Spatenbräu Festhalle and Ochsenbraterei. This one is meant to be “malty, light, sweet, full-bodied, and with a light hops-bitterness.”

Hacker-Pschorr-Oktoberfest-Märzen: 5.8 percent alcohol. Available in - Festhalle «Bräurosl», Hackerbräu-Festhalle, Pschorrbräu. Described as “golden, bottom-fermented, with a malt-aroma and a very mild bitterness.”
Ben Knight (news@thelocal.de)