How to Drink Beer at the Munich Oktoberfest

The Munich Oktoberfest - everyone has heard of it. A number of people have been there (more than 6 million people a year), and some of those even had the chance to drink some beer there (6 million litres every year). But what seems at first glance to be a very straightforward event in fact isn't as trivial as you may believe. Professionally drinking beer at the Oktoberfest is a challenge not everyone is able to master. This article "How to Drink Beer at the Munich Oktoberfest" will give you a little guidance and help you to avoid the most embarrassing mistakes.

Overview

There is more to drinking beer at the Oktoberfest than simply going there, drinking the stuff and then getting home somehow. You should carefully consider each of the following steps:

1. Getting there
2. Ordering beer
3. Drinking beer
4. Getting home

Getting there

Getting to Munich

This article won't go into detail about how to get to Munich. In general, a visit to Munich should not be encouraged during the Oktoberfest, as the whole city is crowded during that time. Actually, it would also make sense not to book a hotel room during the Oktoberfest, because there are no hotel rooms available in late September anyway - and those that are available are either astronomically expensive, or 50 kilometres out of the city centre.

If you are one of the "I'd-rather-go-camping-because-that's-cheaper-guys": you also won't want to camp at the "Thalkirchen" camping ground right next to the hordes of Aussies and Kiwis who either play drinking/getting naked/puking games all day or holler drunkenly all night. You also won't be able to find a place for your caravan because all the legal places have already been occupied by Italians, and the illegal spaces are kindly kept free for ignorant tourists by the local authorities who keep towing away the caravans parked there. Again: this article prefers not to go into detail about how to get to Munich - it's too sad a story!

Getting to the beer tent

So how do you get to the Oktoberfest? You should go
there by public transport, by bike or on foot. But that's only the first part of the story.
The essential question is: how to get to a place at the Oktoberfest where you can drink good beer? This is a deep philosophical question. Here's why: there are seven different beer brands in Munich. Each of these beer brands has its own typical taste (do you notice the tiny difference between having just Bud and a Bud Light?). There is an ongoing discussion about which of the Munich beers is actually the best. The diplomatic answer would be: they are all very good.
You should find out yourself what your preference is - the Oktoberfest is a good opportunity to do that. It should be noted that the beer served at the Oktoberfest has been especially brewed for the Oktoberfest and has a little more alcohol than the "normal" beer that is brewed for the rest of the year. When choosing a place to drink beer, you should keep in mind that you won't get all Munich beers in all beer tents. Instead, every Munich brewery has one or more tent at the Oktoberfest where they serve only their fine brew.

But the beer brand is only one point to consider in your choice of beer tent. The second question is: what kind of athmosphere are you after? You should know that every beer tent has its own atmosphere, ranging from drunken party atmosphere with popular music to a more relaxed, traditional athmosphere with folk music. Therefore younger people would usually prefer e.g. the "Hacker-Festzelt" beer tent because of the party atmosphere, while older people prefer e.g. the "Schützen-Festzelt" because of its relaxed ambience. You should also know that certain nationalities have certain preferences for certain beer tents e.g. Australians like the "Hofbräu Festzelt" beer tent, because that's where they can pitch their drinking skills against the Kiwis, who make up the other 50% of the crowd.

To make it even more complicated: there is a third factor to consider in the choice of beer tent: the food. There are beer tents which offer special food that you won't get in other beer tents e.g. the "Fischer-Vroni" offers a wide variety of fish and the "Ochsenbraterei" offers ox meat.

Let's assume you have finally come to a decision about which beer tent to go for. The next question is: how do you get in there? You should know that beer tents tend to be crowded almost all of the time. Here's why: there are 14 big beer tents at the Oktoberfest, each with a capacity of about 6000 places.
There are 6 million visitors in the two weeks. You can do the math yourself.

Getting a seat

You might say now: "Where's the problem? I don't need a place to sit - I'll just walk in there, buy my beer and go out again!" Well, nice idea, but you obviously have never heard of the concept of a "Stehmass". The word "Stehmass" is Bavarian and is a combination of the words "stehen" which means standing and "Mass" which is the name of the big glass of beer. You will find signs in the beer tent which indicate that "Stehmassn" aren't allowed i.e. the waitresses and waiters aren't allowed to sell beer to customers without a place to sit. So you need a seat - at least for a couple of minutes
(while purchasing the beer), ideally for a couple of hours. One more word on carrying beers out of the beer tent: the big angry security guys at the exit will happily take care of your beer glass as soon as you try to leave the beer tent because they don't like the idea of them being stolen.

Back to your search for a seat. You will easily get a seat in the beer tent when visiting the Oktoberfest on weekdays before 4pm. From 4pm onwards the beer tent will become more and more crowded, until 6pm when, typically, most of the places are rammed full. The reason for this is that a huge number of places is reserved by companies for their employees. Reserved tables must be occupied by 4pm at the latest, therefore they typically are. So you should make sure that you don't occupy any reserved seats, as the companies typically insist on their reservation having paid a lot of money for them.

So how do you get your seat? The first method is: get there early enough and occupy an unreserved place (i.e. a bench without a reservation sign on it).
The second method is: successfully organize a place even though you are late. A good idea is to ask the waitress/waiter for places. You should know that the waitress "owns" the places i.e. every waitress/waiter has an area she/he serves as a subcontractor. The landlord just arranges the reservations, but the final decision of who sits where is up to the waitress/waiter. With a little luck, you might get a place in a "box" (a quieter area on the edge of the beer) by talking nicely to a waitress/waiter.

Getting a place in the (substantially more atmospheric) middle area of the beer tent might be a bit harder. You have a good chance of getting a place for one or two people by carefully scanning through the places and asking people whether you might join them on their bench. Take good looking women with you to increase your chances. You have a good chance of finding places with this method when showing up between 8pm and 9pm because several people will already be leaving at that time, having quenched their thirst already. In fact, they are still thirsty (and will become more thirsty because of dehydration by alcohol), but their heads are already spinning, their tongues are getting too heavy to order more beer, or they simply couldn't find their way back from the restroom.

As soon as you have found your seat, sit down and don't leave it for as long as you can hold out.

Ordering beer

Ordering beer is astonishly simple at the Oktoberfest. The problem is that most tourists don't realise how simple it is. Most tourists try to order by saying "Would you mind bringing us two of these big glasses of beer?". That's too complicated. Simply wait for your waitress/waiter, make sure she sees you and raise two fingers. That's it - you'll get your beers a couple of minutes later.

How did the waitress/waiter do that? Even though you can buy a large number of things in a beer tent, the waitress/waiter knew for some reason that you wanted beer - amazing! Well, the secret is that 95% of the products sold in a beer tent happens to be beer. Therfore there is a high chance that raising two fingers means: "Bring me two beers please".

A few words on your ordering options: there is only a limited number of drinks available in a beer tent. You can get beer, alcohol-free beer and with some luck you might get non-alcoholic drinks like lemonade, "Spezi" (a mix of cola and orange soda) or water. In some beer tents you will have to buy non-beerish drinks outside. You won't get different sizes of beers, the only size known is the "Mass" (one litre). In most beer tents you won't get Weissbier (wheat beer). "Radler" (beer mixed with lemonade - a "shandy") is only available in a few beer tents.

Your order has to be paid immediately on delivery. Typically you add 10% - 20% tip ¹ depending on the quality of the service (or round it up to the next whole Euro unit).
VERY IMPORTANT! It is easy to underestimate the importance of tipping, but bear in mind, if the waitress knows you'll tip her, she'll keep coming back to your table with more beer.
If she knows you haven't worked out the tipping game yet, you might have a looooooong wait between beers, and no-one wants that now, do they?

Drinking beer

Drinking beer at the Oktoberfest is more complex than it seems. You don't simply sit there and drink your beer whenever you like. There is a sort of drinking ritual. There are several triggers to nudge you to drink beer:

Drinking beer when you get your freshly ordered beer

The reason for that is, that there is nothing better than a fresh beer. You are happy to get a fresh beer and all the people around you share your happiness about your fresh beer. So you should enjoy this moment and celebrate it by saying "Prost" (German for cheers) and drinking some beer together with the people around you. This also means that you celebrate every fresh beer brought to the people around you in the same way. (When clinking glasses in Germany it is important to look your counterpart in the eye. Otherwise, legend has it, you will be cursed with seven years bad sex, and no-one wants that now, do they?)

Drinking beer when someone next to you drinks beer

As soon as you sit down, all the people around you become your new temporary friends. If you speak German, you will immediately notice this because the formal form of address "Sie" (you, formal) is immediately replaced by the informal form of address "Du" (you, informal) which is used when talking with friends. You can even talk to the waitress on this informal level. Since drinking together is expected behavior for friends, you now drink whenever someone at your table is drinking. You even drink whenever someone at the neighbouring tables is drinking.

Drinking beer when you are thirsty

This is probably the case you had in mind when you started the "Drinking beer" section. While this case is very typical for a non-Oktoberfest setting, it is very rare in an Oktoberfest environment. You might be thirsty when entering the beer tent after a strenuous walk to the Oktoberfest or after eating a salty "Hendl" (chicken) or a dry "Brezn" (pretzel). In most cases, however, you won't get a chance to develop a thirst because you will be drinking all the time anyway.

Drinking beer when the band plays "Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit"

As you probably noticed, the rules above only ensure that you are drinking most of the time, but not all the time. To ensure non-drinking periods are kept to a mimum, the band plays "Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit" (cheers, to a relaxed mood) - a short tune ended by shouting "1, 2, 3 gsuffa" (one, two three drink) and taking a swig of your beer. The band plays this tune every 10 minutes, or even more often. This cheap and simple, but very effective marketing trick has the whole beer tent drinking beer the whole time - amazing, isn't it?

It has to be noted that there are a number of beer drinking disciplines at the Oktoberfest: drinking while sitting, drinking while standing, and finally drinking while standing on the bench. You shouldn't even think about drinking beer while dancing and jumping on the bench out of respect for the good beer that would get spilled, and the other people who would end up wearing it. You should also not even dream of standing on the table - whether with or without beer. Standing on the bench is considered to be ok, while standing on the table is considered to be a reason for the big angry security guys from the exit to show up immediately.

While drinking beer you should be aware that you might need to give the liquid back sooner or later. Since the restrooms are typically far away at the other end of the beer tent, you should consider thinking about a restroom walking strategy like "sit as long as you can before you go for the first time".
Men might sit for up to two litres of beer while women might need to go earlier. Better plan this in advance, otherwise you will keep running to the toilet every 30 minutes.

Getting home

Drinking beer and getting home seem to be completely unrelated tasks at first glance. However, these two tasks are in fact very closely related, because excessive indulgence in the first task can render the second task almost impossible i.e. returning home after drinking beer seems to be a very hard task for many visitors of the Oktoberfest. Even though the Oktoberfest ends around 11pm you can see a lot of people hanging around there hours after the tents have closed.

The most common problem is that these people have forgotten one or more things: they have forgotten in which hotel they are staying, they have forgotten how to get to their hotel, they have forgotten how to get to the subway or where to find a taxi cab, they have forgotten how to walk or speak, and in more serious cases they have forgotten who they are, how to behave or, in the most extreme cases, they even forget how to breathe.

For most of the less serious cases, writing down the important facts for later reference might be a big help. There are a lot of helpful people in Munich who will be happy to lend a hand in case you have forgotten something. People in Munich are used to this phenomenon of acute Gedächtnisverlust (memory loss) around Oktoberfest time.

Conclusion

Altogether, drinking beer at the Oktoberfest can be a lot of fun. The secret is to be well informed and to keep yourself under control. As long as you control the beer instead of letting the beer control you, your visit of the Oktoberfest can be an experience to remember(or not).