don’t mind me, just gonna be dehydrated until 2018
Once upon a September, a very easy-to-kidnap blonde woman and seven of her best friends embarked on a pilgrimage through Germany, with the goal of surviving Oktoberfest, mind and body intact and accountable. Will the blonde woman get air marshaled before she even gets there, after questioning the physics of flying mid-flight, quickly sparking a deranged panic attack? What happens to the human body if one consumes solely beer, butter and salted meat for 7 days? Will any of them eat chicken again? All the answers to come, in what sounds like the plot to a mash-up of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, SAW, Chronicles of Narnia and The Hangover.
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How to best survived Oktoberfest: What’s the wurst that could happen?
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So Oktoberfest can be approached one of two ways; you can either kind of wing it and show-up or plan fastidiously in advance, reserving tents, locking down an Airbnb close by and getting the appropriate costumes. If you’re in the prior group, your day starts by lining up with the other peasants at 7:30am. This narrative is written from the latter experience, as life is anxious enough and Oktoberfest can require a lot of waiting and crowds, kind of like Disneyland but with massive beers, hypertension and zero responsible adults.
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So about those tent reservations. You can either make morning (11am-4pm) or evening (5pm – 10pm) reservations – evenings book years in advance and the tent you chose dictates the mood, music, demographic and degree of anarchy things eventually dissolve into. Google is a wonderful place to conduct due diligence; some have children, some consist of locals who have been going forever, and some resemble a slightly more clothed and civilized Coachella. No matter where you go, your only language in common is Sesame Street level English. A few tents from our hazy travels:
At Hacker-Festhalle, you’re surrounded by clouds and stars, which makes you feel a bit like you’re in a Super Mario level. They play solid Rock n’ Roll and the space holds 9,300 revelers.
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Loewenbrau-Festhalle is one of the most American tents and unsurprisingly one of the rowdiest. We unanimously voted this the best chicken and the crowd singing was literally nonstop.
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The Augustiner-Festhalle is traditionally regarded as the friendliest and it held true – we spent 6pm onward here one night and all ended up separated dancing on tables with random families.
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Our nights consistently ended at Schutzen-Festzelt, which has amazing music, great dancing, clutch balconies and Jäger. Ask me how many times I did the Macarena in 3 days.
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At about 11am, you’re going to want to take a respectable photo of yourself to show your family because you will take plenty in which your makeup has melted off and you look like you just emerged into normal civilization after spending a week in a fraternity basement.
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While the beer is a pricey 9 Euros, it’s also a whopping full liter and clocks in at 6-9% alcohol – so you will need to eat or you will die. The options all are essentially the cast for a Paula Dean adult fantasy. The amount of salt, butter and cured meat consumed did more damage to my body than did the marathon I ran a few days prior. Literally the below are the only things we ate for 3 days:
While the beer is a pricey 9 Euros, it’s also a whopping full liter and clocks in at 6-9% alcohol – so you will need to eat or you will die. The options all are essentially the cast for a Paula Dean adult fantasy. The amount of salt, butter and cured meat consumed did more damage to my body than did the marathon I ran a few days prior. Literally the below are the only things we ate for 3 days:
Ah, the Oktoberfest Hendl. Take a Whole Foods rotisserie chicken, an entire stick of butter, cover aforementioned chicken with said-butter and you have a Hendl.
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Collectively we ate over 5 whole chickens for lunch. Every day. Like goddamn barbarians, clawing at the oily, salty chicken with our bare and definitely dirty hands.
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Imagine the most preserved, cured, non-vegan, gluten heavy, artery clogging, nutritional disaster. I swallowed half of this without chewing, like a proud boa constrictor.
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Cafe Marais was around the corner from our Airbnb and had eggs so heavily folded with butter, it partially saved my life/dug me in dietary hole I’m still crawling out of.
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So it’s 4pm, you realize you’ve been existing in one spot for 6 hours, the floor looks like a dive bar at 3am, you’re just starting to get morning work emails from the States and you’re pretty drunk. So naturally, you’ll most likely decide it’s a good idea to go on a ride. You will assuredly regret that decision but only when you’re 150 ft in the air. Any ride is essentially a human Vitamix for carbonated beer, rotisserie chicken, and every-species-of-animal-sausage. Soooo a disaster.
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You will feel like a self-sabotaging moron who wore cut-off jean shorts to a black-tie wedding if you show up in anything less than full Lederhosen/Drindl. You will also feel inferior, stupid and blatantly American. Ladies, where you tie your ribbon designates if you’re single, dating, married or widowed; so if a guy isn’t looking at your chest, he’s looking at your waist. It’s still not your face but it’s a slight improvement. The costume is pricey, will get covered in oil and beer, and you will grow to resent it, but it’s necessary.
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After 6pm, if you don’t pass out, this is basically what you can expect to happen…
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The next day, this is also roughly what you can expect to happen to your body/soul:
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So what else there is to do in Munich besides being a degenerate of society, you ask?
The Neuschwanstein Castle is a stunning 19th-century Romanesque Revival palace in southwest Bavaria, Germany. It was the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty castle and was commissioned by King Ludwig II in 1868 (meanwhile the United States was building railroads), paid for out of his personal funds rather than public borrowing. Anyone can visit the castle (about 1.5 hours south of Munich) and hike a pretty insane hour uphill ascent for remarkable views. After, we went to a rural bed and breakfast, Landgasthof Adler, for lunch and while I have zero idea what I ate, it had a side of massive tater tots and was the best thing I had the entire trip.
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Coming soon on Gothamist: “Mayor DeBlasio says F the MTA, build me a medieval castle in Central Park.”
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!!! Oktoberfest by the numbers!!!
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Visitors: 7,200,000
Tents: 14 large, 20 small
Wine consumed: 94,795 litres
Beer consumed: 6,900,000 litres
Chicken consumed: 549,899 birds
Pork sausages housed: 140,225 pairs
Foiled attempts of stealing beer steins: 111,000 cases
Lost items: 4,500 items, including 1,000 articles of clothing, 950 ID cards, 570 wallets, 400 keys, 480 phones, 80 cameras, 2 wedding rings, a hearing aid and a dog