Munich and Oktoberfest 2013: beer, pretzels ad curry wursts!

Yesterday I wrote about wine, today I’m going to stick to beer! Just to keep it fair! 🙂 Oktoberfest! Everyone heard about it, everyone has their own image of it, but only a few visited the event… We thought about going before, but a 4 month old or 16 month old child made it quite difficult. This year, our little one was “almost” grown up with his 2 years and 4 months and we decided to leave him with grandma for weekend and go… Literally! 🙂

Unfortunately we only spent 48 hours in Munich, but we managed to feel the atmosphere and will probably come back. Preferably for a longer stay with friends! Who’s coming next year? 🙂

So, what’s this Oktoberfest about anyway? Do you know? I knew that it is held in Munich and is about beer, but that’s all… What’s more, I imagined a kind of area with people sitting around, drinking beer, eating German wursts (sausages) and Bavarian pork knuckle… I had no idea about the size of it! The terrain turned out to be to be gigantic! You could eat there, drink, dance, party, have fun in the amusement park, eat some chocolate covered fruits and do lots of other things! It also turned out, that daytime Oktoberfest is a great place for families with little children and Maks would surely be happy to play there. The pictures we have taken cannot show you our impression. You just have to see it for yourself: the crowd, people dressed in traditional Bavarian clothes, party, roller coasters, tons of beer, kilometres of wurst and kilograms of pork knuckle!

What we liked the most was the fact that pretty much everybody was dressed in traditional Bavarian clothes, even when it got cold at night. The costumes were on sale EVERYWHERE, even in chain stores such as C&A.

We also thought about buying costumes, but were immediately discouraged by the price: EUR 100 for one part of the costume for one person! Maybe next time, when we get Munich for a stay longer that 48 hours 😉 We got a bit jealous because of the costumes, especially when we entered the halls and tents, where everybody partied dressed up… Maybe next time! 😉 Hopefully! 🙂

Apart from the costumes, beeeer and German specialties were omnipresent…

But first…  A FEW WORDS ABOUT OKTOBERFEST!

The event, a so called beer harvest festival, dates back to 1810! Such events were already popular in Bavaria in 16th century (they knew what’s good!), and were organised in order to get rid of the beer from the last season, before new batches will be brewed. In Munich, it all started in 1810, when horse races were organised outside of town to honour prince Ludwig and his fiancée Theresa (the area is now called Theresenwiese – the Theresa’s meadows 🙂 ). It had big influence on next editions of – it was more a sport event than a beer one then. Since 1880 beer sales are allowed. Since then, the formula of Oktoberfest has been evolving into what it is today…

Only traditional Munich breweries such as Augustiner, Paulaner, Lowenbrau, Hofbrau, Hacker-Pschorr and Spater-Franziskaner-Brau are allowed to serve beer during Oktoberfest. The visitors can have fun in 14 beer halls!!! The area is enormous and it’s easy to get lost at night among similar-looking places and dressed up people. Biggest halls have as much as 10,000 seats. There are two types of halls: brewery halls and Oktoberfest hosts tents. The atmosphere in the tents is absolutely mad – people dance on tables, everyone keeps singing German beer songs and the beer glasses are constantly in the air! Fascinating atmosphere!

Smaller halls are more quiet (like the one above) – more crowded (a bouncer counts the people at the entrance and sits them anywhere he can fit them), with more beer and generally nicer than the tents. Sitting with random people has its advantages. You suddenly end up at a table with a German who will tell you more about Oktoberfest, with a Spanish girl who speaks my favourite language and with an elegant couple. Everyone raises their 1 litre beer glasses in toasts – there’s not many beers to choose from, fortunately they had Radler – unfortunately I can’t drink one litre of beer without lemon or raspberry syrup 🙂 (I’m a girl, you know!), but I did drink a whole Radler, oh yes… 🙂 This Radler tastes even better for next day’s breakfast, with a pretzel and a wurst.. mmmm, delicious! 🙂

Apart from beer, everyone eats the same stuff in the halls – roast duck or chicken (delicious, juicy and with a crispy skin) with a potato knedla (delicious! I love it!) and an optional portion of red cabbage. We couldn’t resist these specialties!

On the Oktoberfest terrains, the beers is sold until 11-12 pm, which is not so surprising as the party goes on all day long. After beer, we decided to have some fun in the amusement park – electric cars were the best, they reminded me of the holidays by the seaside in 1993! We also tried some sweets, chocolate covered fruits than can be purchased on EVERY corner. As you can see it’s not only about beer, beer and beer…

Being in Munich, we also took a walk around the city, but it wasn’t too amazing to be honest. I remember that I got the same impression when I went skiing to Stubai and spent one day here.

The neo-gothic New City Hall from 19th century looks great towering over the main square – Marienplatz, the boardwalk is cool as well and the town gates look interesting. But that’s all!

We got quite fascinated by Viktualienmarkt though. Not far from Marienplatz… a combination of a fair and little shops selling food to go (cheese, Italian and Spanish cold meats, etc.) and to eat on the spot (wursts and pork knuckles rule!). There was also an attractive looking restaurant with seafood, but this time we stayed faithful to German cuisine and our breakfasts looked like this…

Currywurst turned out to be our biggest love. It’s a sliced pork sausage, covered with tomato sauce (based on tomato concentrate, but “low-cost” versions may include ketchup) and sprinkled with curry. Tastes best with a pretzel or with a bread roll. Łukasz was looking forward to eating a curry wurst since we arrived as he already knew the flavour from our trip to Wiesbaden in 2011, when we visited our friends. I wasn’t sure about that as it doesn’t look too attractive, but it tasted absolutely delicious! Seems like the Germans have the same opinion as more than 800 million portions are sold in large German cities every year!!! WOW!

Viktualienmarkt turned out to be the perfect place to start the day, despite the Sunday’s crowds. The atmosphere was great, it was open air and with lots of delicacies around. We proceeded to our “light” breakfast 🙂

Z informacji praktycznych Oktoberfest trwa zwykle 16 – 18 dni, więc jeśli macie szanse, wybierzcie się na jakieś 4-5 dni 🙂 W tym roku zakończył się całkiem niedawno – w niedzielę 6 października. W 2014 roku odbędzie się w dniach 20 września – 5 października.

Co do trasy, warto załapać się na promocję i lecieć LOTem jak my. Co do noclegu, warto pomyśleć o tym wcześniej, a najlepiej rozejrzeć się po znajomych, bo ceny hoteli i hosteli podczas święta oczywiście absurdalnie rosną! Z przestróg to tyle, a teraz długopis, flamaster lub smartfon w dłoń i zaznaczamy w kalendarzu! Zdrówko! 🙂