Sept 2012
cheat sheet for OFEST
Print this out and take it with
you to Munich
Hacker - Bavarian Heaven
The following is
what you should expect. It is adapted previous year’s cheat sheet, but still is
99% accurate and will give you a general expectation about what to do and when
to do it.
HOTEL NAME, ADDRESS, and Phone #
Make your way to
the hotel above and get checked in.
It
will cost about €50 for a taxi or you
can take the S Bahn from the airport for
about €10.50 . YOU MUST HAVE EUROS TO
PAY FOR TAXI OR TRAIN.
If you take the
S Bahn from the airport, you take the S1 or S8 train from the airport towards
downtown Munich
and get off at Hauptbahnhof Central Station.
Transfer to the U4 or U5 two stations and get off at Schwanthalerhohe
station. The station exits are next to a park.
Walk to the other side of the park (go to the far left corner and then
turn left- you can see the hotel from the corner of the park) Walk about 5 mins
to hotel. It will take about 45 mins or so for the entire journey. It sounds a bit complicated, but it is
actually very easy. Print the map of the
train system that is located on our website or see below map. It is all simple to read and well laid
out. The cost of the Ubahn is about 10.50
Euros/person. A taxi will cost about 50 Euros (if I remember correctly). Once you arrive at the hotel, drop off your
luggage, put your polo shirt on and head
to the tent. Your shirt is like the golden ticket. It allows you access to
things that nobody else will have access to.
Once you arrive in the tents, don’t forget to PACE YOURSELF. The first
litre will go down in 10 mins. So will the second one if you let it. By then you will swill the third one within
the hour and then it gets uglier and uglier from there. Take your time. Enjoy your beer. Veterans know how to make
the beer last…rookies typically end up face down on the table (see ROY ’09 photos on
website).
9/27
Thursday Arrival day Game day shirt: Polo
Shirt with Collar
Go outside of
the hotel and walk straight down the street that the hotel is located on and it
will lead you directly to the Wiesn.
Arrive
early and you will be the first to taste the 2012 Oktoberfest beer. This
beer is brewed specifically for Oktoberfest and is arguably the best beer in
the world. Once you have checked in, I would suggest making your way over
to the Wies'n (vee-sen). That is the piece of land on which the
Oktoberfest is sitting. Veterans call it the Wies'n, so start calling it
that. Examples, "Are you going to the Wies'n tonight?"
"Is The Hoff still passed out at the Wies'n?" "Did Der
Stinker get thrown out of the Wies'n again?" You get the picture.
I will get there at around noon on Thursday and will be at the Hacker Festzelt
tent. In the map below, that is tent number 4. Ask for directions at the front desk how to
get there, but I assure you there will be a steady flow of people heading
there. Just follow the crowd. If you are
following a bunch of totally hammered people, you are going the wrong way.
These are the people who are leaving the Wiesn.
Turn around! The hotel is only
about 10 minute walk to the Wiesn.
There
is a main road where all of the tents are located. Hacker is tent 4 below. It is between the HB (Hofbrau) and
Shottenhamel tent and across from Augustiner Brau. The picture of the front of our tent is at
the top of this cheat sheet. This is
where we will hoist a few masses of beer for the next 3 days. Go in the front doors, turn left and head
towards the back of the tent down the left hand aisle. When you are about halfway (about equal with
the bandstand), look to the right for people in our polo shirts . We’ll
be near the walkway so we should be easy to spot. We'll stay there pretty much
all afternoon and evening and then head for pizza afterward We will go to Pizza after the Wiesn and tell
some funny stories. If you get too
wasted, don’t forget the hotel name is printed on your shirt sleeve.
Friday 9/28 Game
Day Shirt soccer style shirt Meet in the Ars
Vivendi hotel lobby at 8:15 and
we will walk over together. They start serving beer at 10. We do not have reservations for Friday. It is imperative that you are in the lobby
so that we can all sit together on Friday. It is a nightmare saving seats, so meet in the
lobby by 8:15 and we will head over to Hacker. ROOKIES MUST 100% BE IN
THE LOBBY BY 8:15!!! Veterans will
already know to be there! We will spend virtually the whole day in
Hacker that day. We must get to the tents at the opening if we are going
to be able to sit together, because many of the Germans in Munich will take the day off of work Friday and fill the tents.
The doors close around 2 or 3pm sometimes, and it is hard to get in.
If the doors ARE closed, text me +1 925 518 7437 or Joe Sanchez +1 512
787 2876 and we will try to get you in.
All of the entrances are numbered and we will be near door S7 (south 7
next to where the waiters enter and exit).
Phones are impossible to hear inside the tent so texting is the only
real option for communicating. We will
go to Pizza after the Wiesn and tell some funny stories. If you get too wasted,
don’t forget the hotel name is printed on your shirt sleeve.
Saturday 9/29 Game
day Shirt : T Shirt with Oktoberfest
/iFest on the front.
Morning – You
have options… Get up at your leisure. Today would be a good day to walk around
the Wies'n and see what else there is going on. If you can't bear to
smell the beer, jump on the train and go to the town center (MARIENPLATZ).
Munich is
a nice city. Explore. We
will probably arrange a Mike’s Bike Tour like we did a last year or we will do
a different bike tour this time TBD. If
you want to do the bike tour, you will need to be in the lobby at 10am SHARP!!!
It was really flat and simple tour of Munich. Like a walking
tour, but on a bike. You will definitely
like this trip. If you want to get a bit
more adventurous, Dachau
(concentration camp) is pretty close. The hotel will have information about Dachau. Ask at the front
desk. Whatever you do on Saturday, BE BACK AT THE HOTEL BY 3:30PM!
We will be meeting in the lobby/restaurant of Hotel Ars Vivendi at 4pm. We will have our annual award ceremony at
this time and it is normally something you do not want to miss. We will be departing for the tents at 5:30pm. We will have our official Ofest Rookie of the
Year at this time. We have reservations at tent Hacker
Festzelt (tent 4 above). We all need to stay together and enter the tent
around 5:45. The reservations start at 6:00pm. If you do not come
with the group, they WILL NOT LET YOU IN!!! They will clear some tables for us
at that time. It's magical. We will drink all night Saturday. If you are not there with our group, you
likely will not get in the tent on Saturday.
It is packed and impossible to get in w/o reservations on Saturday.
This will be a great night, so be sure to meet in the hotel lobby to get your
pass. We will also give you food and
drink vouchers for the night . We
will go to Pizza after the Wiesn and tell some funny stories. If you
get too wasted, don’t forget the hotel name is printed on your shirt
sleeve.
Sunday 9/30 Return home.
I suggest you take a vacation day on Monday.
Miscellaneous things:
Clothes: This is very informal. If you don’t have lederhosen (more than 80% of us will have them) Wear comfortable shorts
or pants. Have both available. Normally
the weather is nice, so shorts are appropriate.
If it is raining and cold, then you could still wear shorts, but you’ll
get wet on the walk to the tent. Might want to buy a disposable poncho from Wal
Mart for the trip so that you won’t get wet walking to the tent. It is dry
inside of course. It will not be cold
in the tent. If it is 75 outside, it
will feel like 175 inside. Lots of
sweaty people, and spilled beer. Your
shoes will get beer spilled all over them.
Don’t wear nice shoes. You likely
will not need a nice set of clothes, although some adventurous people have gone
out to clubs after the O’fest closes at 11pm.
Take a look at the various pix that we have sent and you can see how
casual the dress is. Here is a listing
of the shirts that we will all wear:
Thursday: Polo Shirt Friday: soccer Jersey Sat:
T-Shirt
Weather: Normally it is 75 or so. However, it could be 50 and raining. Bring a light jacket just in case it is
raining and you have to be outside for the ½ mile walk from/to the hotel. Bring
a jacket that you don’t care if it gets lost or VERY dirty.
Money; Normally
I would expect > $350 US to be enough to pay for beer and food and trains,
but you should probably count on $400-$500 because you are going to be in a
good mood and want to buy your new German friends a few beers. A taxi to the airport is about €50 ($75). THEY DO NOT ACCEPT US$ there. If you
are going to take taxis and buy lots of beers for your new best friends, then
you need to bring lots more money. Beers are about 9Euros each (per liter). USD
will not do you any good there. They do
have ATM’s that you can get Euros from or you can get them at the airport or at
your bank before departure. They have ATM’s at the airports, throughout the
city and at the Wies’n itself. Tell
your credit card company that you will be in Europe
because some cards don’t go through when they have European transactions that
aren’t approved in advance.
Beer &
Food We will pay for our own beers at
the tent. We will take a small collection at the beginning of the day to ensure
we have good service from our waiters and security guards . Beers are served in
liters only and normally cost about 9 Euros (+/- $12US) . Food will cost about 15 Euros per day. Normally we
buy pizzas after the festivities across the street from the Wiesn. This costs another 10 Euros or so.
Phones:
Your Verizon or Sprint phone will not
work in Germany
unless you have a world phone or
have made arrangements for them to give you a world phone in advance. This takes about 1-2 weeks to arrange so plan
accordingly. T-Mobile and AT&T will work in Germany, but calls are about
$2-$3/minute!!!
Germany is 9 hours ahead of Pacific time zone. Best time to call back home is after 5pm
German time (or 8am Pacific Time)
A good website
to keep track of between now and the beginning of Ofest is the official Ofest
website: www.oktoberfest.de/en
OUR WEBSITE IS
Our website is the best resource for the
trip. It has lots of info. Play around
with it and you will see lots of useful info
