Oct 7, 2015

Posted by in Bavaria, Oktoberfest, slider | Comments Off on What a Wiesn! Our look back at the 2015 Oktoberfest

What a Wiesn! Our look back at the 2015 Oktoberfest

What a Wiesn! Our look back at the 2015 Oktoberfest

We do hope you’ve been keeping up with our updates on this blog as well as keeping an eye on our Twitter feed; because if you didn’t, you missed out on our live posts from inside the tents! But now that the 12 shots have fallen in front of the Bavaria statue and the Wiesn is over for 2015, we’ve got plenty of time – to cry, yes, but also to write up our experiences for you, our loyal readers.

“In you come!” is the new “Closed due to overcrowding”

So what has been worthy of note in 2015? For a start, it was a quieter year at the Oktoberfest, with the authorities reporting a 7% drop in visitors on 2014. If that sounds bad, it isn’t, because in 2014, the Wiesn was so packed that most tents – even the less popular ones – ended up closed due to overcrowding. The overspill filled every beer garden, too, and it was tough to get a seat anywhere. You can just imagine how frustrating it was to, even on – say – a Monday afternoon to find that there was nowhere left open and that, in that sense, the day was pretty much over. This year was the complete opposite: in 16 days, we only twice saw tent doors locked, and only heard about it happening another couple of times. Apart from that, you could just walk up into pretty much any tent (and from then on in, you’re only a few expert tricks away from a table…)

Beer consumption slows

Even the tent landlords couldn’t really complain about the fact that there were less visitors because, compared to their drop in numbers, beer consumption only fell by 5%. That is, if you ask us, a clear sign that the Oktoberfest has already become a victim of its own success: the 7% more guests who turned up last year must have just had more difficulty getting to the beer. Both the Wiesn and the people who put it on, can handle a little more space between the bums on benches.

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So schön sieht das neue Schützen-Festzelt aus…

Food consumptions changes

That is all the more when you consider that those who did come this year spent more money: obviously, the increase in the beer price saw to that, but much of the lack of corresponding drop in turnover given the decline in beer consumption was actually balanced out by increased food sales, not just the 3 increase in the price of beer. That’s because food choices at the Oktoberfest are becoming more sophisticated: rather than chicken every day, people are branching out into pricier meats like duck; or they are replacing a simple pretzel with, say, spinach dumplings. We, too, went seriously over budget this year with a delicious roasted fish (18 Euros for a large char!).

Oide Wiesn in fine fettle

The Oide Wiesn lived up to expectations set in previous years, and it is now really hard to imagine the authorities sticking to the original plan and shifting it for the four-yearly agricultural show due on that part of the Theresienwiese in 2016. It has simply become too well established and is too popular, putting on a mix of traditional Bavarian music and displays, as well as offering spare beer-tent capacity.

Der Paulaner-Turm: Münchens schönstes Hochhaus!

Der Paulaner-Turm: Münchens schönstes Hochhaus!

Bavarian fashion becomes less Bavarian

What is very interesting about this year is that the Bavarian fashion trends are continuing to move away from the traditional fixed sets. Obviously, the people from the Bavarian costume clubs and the set-buying tourists look the same as ever, but the Munich insiders are moving towards combinations of everyday wear with single, Bavarian statement pieces, one example of which we saw both on Him and Her was a combination of linen shirt and/or waistcoat with jeans – especially combined with expensive leather or loden jackets in a traditional Alpine style. Given the fact that now almost every German visitor and a large proportion of returning Oktoberfest-goers from abroad have genuine lederhosen, we suppose that this is going to be the new way to mark oneself out as a genuine Munich resident. Denim wasn’t just in the jeans, but in the still-popular jeans dirndls and in the Bavarian bodices, combined with lederhosen for her, a great look for younger ladies looking to eschew the standard dirndl outfit now so widespread.

This and that

A with every year, this year’s Oktoberfest saw some amazingly odd bits of lost property, from the obligatory dentures through to a dog, a licence registration plate, and a wooden sign for Sauerkraut.

What was very odd, though, was the lack of a new Wiesn hit song: from Angels to Atemlos and through to Zurück nach Fürstenfeld, we knew every single one. Which, given the other major novelties (such as the new Schützen-Festzelt, made for welcome familiarity…

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