Beer Festivals in Germany

When the word 'Beer Festival' crops up for the likes of Germany one thing comes to mind... Oktoberfest. This is the world wide known German beer festival based in Bavaria's capital and largest city Munich, or München as it is called in Germany. Oktoberfest although being the beer festival of Munich is in fact imitated in lots of different countries around the world from Monaco to Brazil. The question is though, is Oktoberfest the best German beer festival in Germany? Now with its world wide recognition you would think so, but having lived in Germany for over a year I have had the opportunity to attend a handful of beer festivals including Oktoberfest and these are my thoughts...

A weekly thing

The crazy thing is, virtually every other week there is a different beer festival in the different towns of Germany, well at least so in Bavaria. They are sort of town celebrations. They generally start around May time and go right through summer until Oktoberfest. Last year I had the opportunity to go to 4 beer festivals.

Bergkirchweih (The Berg) - Erlangen

The first one of which was in my current town of Erlangen, Bergkirchweih. This is a beer festival that lasts a total of 12 days. As this was my first ever beer festival and I had been assured it was amazing by German work colleagues, I got myself a lederhosen at 200€ for the complete outfit. It is the Frankonian costume of Munich so shouldn't really be worn, but in recent years it has become popular at the Berg in Erlangen. So under advice of how good it is, I decided to book the entire time off to be able to go to the Berg every day. . In the end I managed 10 out of the 12 days in a row, consuming a total of 92 Litres of beer along with a number of schnapps (shots to normal people). It got the best of me and completely destroyed me. But it was the best time I've ever had. For the Berg, there are a number of different beer kellers ran by different breweries from around the area. They all make up one long strip and each sell 1 Litre Maß of either full strength festival beer (around 8% alcohol content), a watered down with lemonade shandy version called Radler or Alcohol free beer.

Obviously I never parted from the full strength stuff and the Berg was a challenge which I was more than happy to accept. Every day consisted in waking up around 9am, throwing on my must have Lederhosen and heading straight to the Berg. A bite to eat on the way or up at the festival was a must if you were going to survive the whole day. Then straight to one of the kellers to get the first Maß, where you were served almost immediately all day every day - very dangerous. The whole day involved drinking, dancing and trying not to lose your friends in the mass of people there. Plenty of bands playing throughout the strip with the normally reserved Germans singing along to every word of the, as it seemed, usual festival songs - both in German and English. So there we were, beer in hand making our way through the crowds trying to find a free table to dance on.

Despite hearing the previous week from a German friend that she broke her ribs the previous year falling off one of the super thin tables we proceeded to get on a table, jump up and down with beer in hand and sing along to the bands playing. It took only 3 days until the risk of injury came apparent. The third day of the festival i lost my footing on the table and banged the ceramic Maß on my tooth, chipping it, leaving my once perfectly natural straight teeth looking like those of a hill billy. Absolutely gutted I felt sober again. However not long after realising there was nothing that could be done and the fact my best mate was a dentist and he could fix the mess I had made in two weeks time I continued to party like I didn't have a care in the world. Also to my surprised the ugly teeth didn't seem to put off the ladies, but maybe they were too drunk to notice. The Berg was completely mental. I was drinking beer at 8€ a litre - a bargain for the strength, I was with good friends, dancing and having an absolute blast to some amazing live music, chatting happily about absolute bollocks to the normally reserved German people, people trying to buy beer from me because I apparently looked so German. Prosting every 2 minutes. Seeing hot girls in Dirndls... Boobs everywhere! Kissing 14 different girls in the first 7 days of the festival. This was to me, better than Vegas!!!

Annafest - Forchheim

So a month or so after the Berg started, Annafest was on the cards. Annafest is the beer festival for the next town north of Erlangen, Forchheim. Now this beer festival was a bit more spread out and the beer kellers were right at the top of a hill which involved a long walk up. Also with this festival being in mid June when the weather was reaching temperatures of around 40degC it was horrible. I wanted to wear my Lederhosen, but wearing leather in this heat and having to walk up a steep hill in it was a definite no go. Now again, it was very easy to get a beer without having to clamber over people, queue or have any other stress of waiting for a beer. The beer here though wasn't as good as at the Berg. So with the layout, the beer not being the best and the fact that the heat was so extreme that it made it feel like a lot of effort to be there, I didn't really like it and so only went for a day. I won't be attending this beer festival again in the future - Not unless for some reason the temperatures plummet when the festival is on.

Sandkerwa - Bamberg

The last beer festival I went to in the summer was the Sandkerwa which was the next main town north, so after Forchheim. Now this beer festival occurred in the actual town of Bamberg rather than in surrounding woodland. This made it easily accessible. The beer was a lot better and luckily the day I went it was reasonably cool for the end of July. Again with friends that I had recently met it made it incredible. The beer was reasonable and I drank a lot again. Luckily there was no tables for me to dance on as with how drunk I got I probably would of. So an early Saturday morning of the beer festival, a few of us took the train from Erlangen with a crate of beer to warm up (very common on the way to beer festivals). We then had a drinking session within the train station to wait for the rest of the crew who had missed our train and were getting the next one. Once united, we headed for the main town of Bamberg. Being a large group of boys and girls there was lots of noise and we attracted the attention of other by goers in which we made general chit chat with. Beer festival days are very relaxed between the mix of people - Not like England where everyone would probably fight as they can't not after a lot of alcohol. Finally at the main town we went between different bars with outside tents and drank, danced and had lots of fun.

With such a big mixed group I decided not to pursue girls outside of the group, but turned my attention to the hot Brazilian girl in the group. I don't know if it was the alcohol or me, but I striked lucky and got my prize and somehow she is now my girlfriend. So as the night went on, we stumbled around the town as if it was any other night out to then finally take the last train home. A complete mess I fell asleep to be woken up in Erlangen, which was brilliant as I didn't have to experience the horrible 40 minute journey. The Sandkerwa isn't your typical style beer festival. But it is one that is enjoyable being on level ground and not having to clamber up a hill to get yourself a beer.

Oktoberfest - Munich

The last beer festival in the year, the world famous Oktoberfest - which actually starts at the end of September. Now Oktoberfest is huge with a great beer tent layout and plenty to see and do. But its popularity lets it down by not making it feel as authentic as the other smaller beer festivals mentioned above. In other beer festivals you will find probably 90% of the people there are German and this is what makes them. Oktoberfest is full of people from all over the world. Its popularity therefore causes accommodation prices at that time to go sky high, which was a pain for us as on the standard train it is at least a 2 and a half hour journey from Erlangen. For my first Oktoberfest experience I only had the opportunity to go for one day. So with an early start of 6am we all got ready and took a train down to Munich. Due to the fact we had to catch more than one train this caused issues. The first train was delayed meaning we missed the second train from Nuremberg to Munich. So to the shop it was to buy some more beer for the journey down. Luckily being a big group this killed the time and the boredom as we made good chit chat and drank lots of beer.

With a group pass costing around 9€ each all day, that made Oktoberfest more attractive as we could travel there and back and not have to fork out 50€ each for a Hotel or even a Hostel room, which would still more than likely be booked up. 

After a long pain in the arse journey we finally arrived at Oktoberfest around 11am, much later than we wanted to. It was therefore impossible to go in one of the beer tents, even though I think generally you have to book a table in there. However we found a couple of benches outside a tent where we could still order beer. The place was chock a block and it took around 2 hours to finally get a beer. By this time I had sobered up from the beer on the train. Beer was costing about 9€ for a Maß so that was good surprising it was Oktoberfest, however you couldn't order beer quick enough to get drunk quickly - maybe this is a good thing though.

Throughout the day we wandered about a bit and got bits and pieces to eat and went to the outside areas of the other tents to drink. But here I didn't like the fact that you couldn't take your beer outside the tent area. All in all, Oktoberfest was too busy and it was too stressful and took too long to order a beer. However after only one day I feel I need to give Oktoberfest a second chance to redeem itself. Especially as we went on the opening day of it. Maybe next time I shall go mid week.

So my conclusion on German beer festivals is that the Bavarian towns outside of Munich that host beer festivals unknown to the rest of the world are the best. There is still a huge range of beer variety but you can get served quick and easy. The people at these beer festivals seem to get along with everyone. The music is amazing. It is just on a whole, less stressful and more fun. The Berg is the best I have been to in the area around where I live, just north of Nuremberg. It is a small walk up a hill to get to the main area. But once there, it is flat and you can't really miss a beer keller like you can at Annafest. The music and the atmosphere is amazing and I will probably go every year for the rest of my life now, no matter where in the world I am living.