I can’t upload images from my iPhone right now but I’ll try to get that fixed.

I start working the machine to buy four adult passes and some nearby nosy old dude who was just passing by steps up and says in broken English “No. That is wrong”.

Thanks pal, but I’m savvy to an array of airport and transit scams and am not going to be interested in your brothers taxi service which you’ll soon be selling me. I smiled and continued.

So this 130 pound, 60 year old guy steps in, hip checks me out of the way cancels my primordial order and delves into an obscure subsection that’s a group airport pass which saves us thirty bucks! He points to the money slot, nods authoritatively and says “That is correct”.

In the time it took our sleep deprived selves to understand this, he had moved on, looking for no thanks or handout, just to fix something that wasn’t being done optimally.

We were a few liters deep by then, so service wasn’t that big a focus. Finding a polite way to join a table of strangers took priority. Fortunately, some very gentlemanly Dutch hauled us up to the table they were dancing on and included us in their festivities. Also hitting on Holly.

They taught us their drinking cheer (roughly – “You’ll die if you drink, you’ll die if you don’t, so let’s drink”) and had us hoist up our table overhead while we stood on our benches to clink glasses beneath. A table with beer, food and feet on it for 12+ hours was pretty gross but hey, we weren’t TOO choosy.

Felt good to go until they shut down the taps. That was a good portent to get some sleep.

It turns out that you really do for real absolutely actually need a reservation in a beer tent to get the full Oktoberfest experience. Realistically, you need to do this in the winter or spring before Oktoberfest. We tried a few weeks ago. Chrissy somehow managed to get us a slot for Friday morning which was a blast. Saturday had no chance and there are very few walk up places to just get a beer (weird, right?).

Anyway, the three of us went to the fest to wander around, get dampknüdel and see if we somehow found a way to beat the system. On a Saturday evening. Not bloody likely.

About 15 minutes after hitting the grounds we were in a mass of people standing in front of Ochsenbraterei – the hall with an animatronic of a giant ox roasting on a spit. A dude who’s probably late 30s or early 40s with the lean tanned look of a modern sailor or skier or hiker with a group much more stereotypically German leans over and claims he’ll sell us entrance passes because his group has extra. This is plausible but I’ve fallen for too many scams in my life. It comes of my shining optimism.

I haggled a bit and told him we’d pay if we actually sat down but not before. He was fine with that. And basically, that happened.

We spent six hours drinking in a beer hall with seven Germans, sharing songs (turns out Germany has ‘No Never, No More’ as well), language tips (which circled back to sexual euphemisms as naturally as a wasp obsessing over fruit punch), and otherwise had a blast.

Our end tab was far less than I expected so we paid ~2x our share, made them happy, and really got a great deal on a truly amazing experience. I’m still trying to recover.

Anyway, a few things I’ve learned on this trip:
1) You need lederhosen or a dirndl. They’re standard and fun. While I’m sure they can be bought in advance, I sure didn’t plan ahead for anything like that. You can easily buy them in town and the tourist grade ones cost $200-$300. If that seems pricey for something you’ll wear twice, I have bad news about the trip.

2) Hotels gouge you. Viciously. I mean, the good news is that the free market kinda works but rates go from ~$80/night to ~$400/night. Ouch! And quality goes down because they’re swamped. The good news is that we happened to find an awesome location for the hotel. It’s a 15 minute walk from the fest and a 15 minute walk from the altstadt (the old city with shopping and cute restaurants) and about the same to Maximillian Platz which seems to be the nightclub area. Across from Hauptbahnhof. Super convenient.

3) Beer tent reservations are for real. They are necessary and you want to secure them in the November to February time frame. You also want to be down near the band but I don’t know if that’s something you can ask for or if it’s just luck. We did the Hippodrom and the Ochsenbraterei and both were awesome. Afternoon session is better than morning as they play a wider variety of music after 6pm. I believe reservations are only a commitment to spend a minimum amount rather than costing direct money. We only had half a table and we blew past our minimum.

4) Airfare is only somewhat usurious. Right now for next year it’s 1.5x what I think it ‘should’ be.

5) The place is so packed that I suspect that weekdays will be more fun than weekends. Depends if the attendee composition changes or something. Sunday night was tons of high energy young people so I’m not too worried about this.

6) Apparently Italians swarm Oktoberfest in the middle weekend. There’s a saying that Munich is the ‘Northernmost Italian City’. The Müncheners we hung out with said that only the Italians claim this. Subtext is probably avoid this weekend…

That’s my list. It’s more for my benefit than others’ at this point and I’ll collect more thoughts.

And as I drink more, my language skills get better (for real, not just in my head). So I’m ensuring that stays strong.

AKA, having a blast.

After arriving on a redeye our room wasn’t ready at 11am so we went out on the town to check out the noon special at the Marienplatz!