If your idea of heaven includes an inexhaustible supply of beer and wurst, think Oktoberfest. And if you’re thinking about Oktoberfest and haven’t made arrangements yet, get with it—the popular centers sell early. Ground zero remains in Munich, but dozens of U.S. and Canadian cities claim to offer Oktoberfest—some a citywide big deal, some a minor weekend at a single restaurant or bar. Here’s an overview of the Oktoberfest season for 2023.
Munich is still the true, real deal, with official dates this year Sept. 16 to Oct. 3. Currently, I see mid-September round-trip fares from the East Coast to Munich at $1,064 and up nonstop, $805 with a stop; comparable fares from San Francisco are $761 and $1,159.
Kayak shows overall hotel rates as “higher” during the Sept. 15 through Oct. 4 period. It shows that a handful of hotels have rooms near the city center in the $500 range for three nights, although many are already sold out for key days. But if you’re a hardcore pfennig-pincher, you can still swing a deal: Reasonably priced hotel rooms remain available. If you can’t find your deal in the center, consider staying somewhere outside the center with good U-bahn access.
Once you get there, the festival itself needn’t break your budget. Generally, all you have to buy in one of the big venues is a couple of beers—about €14 to €15 ($16 to $17) a pop for a full liter. I pay almost as much for cold draft on tap at my local brew pub. And you pay about the same for a half-chicken lunch or dinner. In many places, water and lemonade cost as much as or more than beer. For details and reservations, check Oktoberfest.de/en/.
- Cincinnati’s Oktoberfest Zinzinnati (OktoberfestZinzinnati.com/) runs Sept. 14 to 17 downtown in a city with a strong German immigration history.
- New Braunfels, Texas, between Austin and San Antonio, makes a strong and justified claim to authentic German heritage. But its bash doesn’t qualify as authentic Oktoberfest; “Wurstfest” (Wurstfest.com/) is scheduled this year for Nov. 3 to 12. Given this summer’s weird weather, November sounds like a good idea.
- In Canada, the top-rated Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest (Oktoberfest.ca/), about 70 miles west of Toronto and 90 miles west of Niagara Falls, runs Sept. 22 to Oct. 14 this year.
As I’ve noted in prior posts, the primary authenticity deficit suffered by U.S. Oktoberfests (and U.S. “German” restaurants generally) is that what they call “Wienerschnitzel” is most likely to be either pork or chicken rather than the authentic veal and is excessively over-breaded. But decent veal for true Wienerschnitzel is almost impossible to find on this side of the Atlantic, and pork-based Schweineschnitzel and Jägerschnitzel are genuinely tasty authentic dishes.
Nevertheless, as I’ve noted in prior Oktoberfest coverage, you can’t think of Oktoberfest without starting at Munich. If you don’t mind missing some of the excessively hokey entertainment, huge crowds, and high prices, Munich offers beer all year, along with great wurst, sauerbraten, schnitzel, and oom-pah-pah bands. And no matter how hard or when you try, Munich will not run out of beer.
