After finishing 3 weeks in Poland we were headed to Munich for a quick detour.  Candice and I had decided that we would avoid Western Europe because it was more expensive and it will be easier for us to visit from Canada but we had a special reason for our stop at Munich, that is Oktoberfest.

Now Munich has much more to offer then the popular beer drinking festival but Germany is an expensive country to visit and Oktoberfest drives the prices up much higher so we only planned a quick 2 day stop here.

What Candice and I didn’t realize is it’s actually a bit of a pain to get from Poland, Krakow precisely, over to Munich.  The distance is almost 1000 kms and a direct bus will take over 13 hours.  Candice wasn’t thrilled at spending 13 hours on a bus – can you blame her? – so we spent a bit of time trying to find a reasonably priced alternative.

We ended up putting together our own itinerary with a bus from Krakow to the Czech Republic border at Ostrava where we then bordered a train to Prague.  At Prague we changed trains for one to Munich.  I think it still took 12-13 hours but trains are more comfortable and changing from bus to train to train helped break up the journey.

There, of course, was lots of options to take a high speed train from Krakow to Vienna and then to Munich but this option, while much faster, would cost almost €150 per person!  Way out of our budget.

We got into Munich late and headed out to Oktoberfest the very next morning but we needed a good filling breakfast to start the day off right.  Now American Pancakes obviously are not German food but we hadn’t had good pancakes for a long time and this place was highly rated so we had to do it.  The pancakes even came with tiny American flags, not cheesy at all.

To help you navigate to the festival grounds the sidewalks had handy directions for you to follow.

Here we are outside the North entrance to Oktoberfest.

Coming from Calgary, that has the Stampede every year, it was very familiar inside the grounds.  The only difference was that the gigantic buildings weren’t doing rodeo events and instead they were doing drinking events.

You can find all the usual fair things like fair food, games, and rides.

But lets be real, the stars of Oktoberfest are these beautiful tents.

Candice found a handy Oktoberfest app for her phone that told you the maximum capacity of every tent and how full it currently was.  The small tents hold 300-1000 people and the largest tents can hold 10,000 or more.  The biggest tent in Oktoberfest holds 8,500 people inside and 2,500 people outside for a whopping 11,000 people!

By the time we wandered the grounds and made our way into our first tent it was just after Noon.  At this point in the day it almost feels calm inside the tent which was only about 40% full.  The tent we found, I believe, only held about 6500 people so at 40% full there were only about 2,600 people inside.

We ordered our first beers and a giant pretzel.  At many fairs the food is sometimes overcooked and not that great but honest to God this pretzel was amazing and the saltiness went so well with the beer.  I don’t understand why us Canadians haven’t picked up this tradition of soft pretzels and beer yet.

Some things to keep in mind if you’re going to visit Oktoberfest:

1. It’s really expensive:  A 1 litre of beer will set you back €11 ($16 CAD) and then you’re expected to leave a tip.  Although when you consider it’s a litre of beer it’s not that bad a price for the amount but let’s be straight, you’re not drinking one of these.  The price of food is also expensive.  If you’re planning on eating a full meal here it will be upwards €20-€30 ($30-$45 CAD) for a dish.
2. Beer is the main option to drink: Some of the smaller tents will serve wine but the main tents only serve Oktoberfest beer and raddlers.  The raddler is half beer and half sprite and Candice said it wasn’t awful but don’t expect to find any ciders or wines in the big tents.  If you’re not a beer lover you will probably find it tough in the big tents.
3. The party really gets going at 4 pm: We read to show up early so we did, at 11 am, but there wasn’t really a lot happening until 3’ish which was fine for us because it gave us time to wander outside and check out the fair grounds.  But if you want too be in the big tents make sure you’re getting a seat around 3 pm.   The tent we were in was 90% full by 4 pm so you would be hard pressed to get seats after that.
4. It’s best between 4 and 7 pm: I’m just assuming this because we spoke with a couple from the States and they said they came the previous day after 7 pm and there were people passed out outside and drunk people getting hauled out by the police.  Before 4 pm it was a bit slow so I suppose 4 to 7 is the sweet time to be there.

The biggest thing to remember is although Oktoberfest is a drinking festival you don’t need to be blind drunk to have fun and if you’re a casual drinker like we are you’ll still have a great time.  The entire atmosphere of being crammed onto seats in a room with thousands of other people all having fun is intoxicating on its own.  People are singing, cheering, music is playing, and everyone seated around you is there to chat with people and have fun.  We were talking away with 4 people from the States, some ladies from Germany, a guy from Spain and one from Denmark.  The beer, the pretzels, and the food was all delicious and overall it was a lot of fun.

I believe we did a smart thing by only bringing €200 ($300 CAD) with us and at 6 pm we were out of money so we said goodbye to the people at our table and left to spend the last of our euros on a more reasonably priced dinner.  I got the feeling it’s really easy to spend a LOT more then €200 in a day.

Recovering Day

Even with all the fun the day before Candice and I were not too worn out and we wanted to use our last day to tour a bit of Munich.  Like many European cities we’ve seen the city is full of amazing architectural buildings to admire.

This is one of the gates to enter the Old Town.

What still gets me even after 2 months of travelling is how much Europeans love their statues.  This amusing one is a priest spitting on a young boy.

I forget what this statue with the fish symbolized but that fish makes me laugh every time I see it.

And there were random ones all over the city

Many, of course, where on churches like these 2.

While we wandered around we entered 3 different churches but this one was truly something else.

As you can see the interior was decorated to an absolute extreme.  The architects were 2 brothers and they wanted to create something really stunning and I do believe they achieved their goal.

The brothers also built their house next to the church and because they wanted to marvel at their own work at any time they chose they put the windows to their bedrooms inside the church facing the altar.  In the photo below each window is one of the brothers’ bedrooms.

There was also this creepy angel statue in the one corner of the church

And this incredibly well done and also incredibly creepy statue.  It signifies Death cutting the strings of life.

Then we came across this monstrosity of a building.  It’s not a church, apparently, but a government building and it was much much too large to photograph.

It, of course, has a fountain out front with some crazy statues: baby warrior angels fighting the 4 evils of the World, Snakes, Dragons, Lions, and Chickens.

I really enjoyed these statues and I still can’t get over that they put a chicken on par with snakes, dragons, and lions.  I definitely chuckled at that.

This picture with Candice is probably the best perspective to see how large the building is.

And that was our quick stop to a place that deserves more then a quick stop.  If you do visit make sure to include a stop at Mad Ludwig’s Castle about 2 hours South of Munich.  We couldn’t fit it in but I’ve heard amazing things about it.  Just look at this picture of the castle.

Because our Visa free stay in the Schengen travel area was up in 3 weeks we needed to quickly head over to Slovakia.  We had 4 more countries to see and 3 weeks was nowhere enough time to do them justice so we, unfortunately, had no more time to spare for Germany and had to say goodbye.