The tents start filling at nine in the morning. This is not a typo. By the time I'd finished my first coffee near the Theresienwiese grounds, the Hofbraü tent was already at capacity, people in dirndls and lederhosen singing songs I didn't know the words to, the band playing something that sounded traditional even if it wasn't, the waitresses carrying multiple liters with a precision that comes from years of practice.
I was three months sober. Hadn't planned on being sober for Oktoberfest specifically—it just happened that way when I decided to take a break from drinking and then the trip was booked and I didn't want to change my plans. I'd been nervous about it, honestly. Beer is the point, right? That's what everyone says. The beer, the pretzels, the general atmosphere of controlled chaos.
My first tent experience was overwhelming in a way that had nothing to do with alcohol. The noise was physical—thousands of people singing in unison, the oompah bands playing songs I somehow knew despite never having learned them, the collective roar of crowd energy that you feel in your chest more than hear with your ears.
A woman at my table—I hadn't reserved, just found an open spot at a bench with strangers who became temporary companions—asked if I wanted a Maß. I said I was taking a break from drinking. She nodded without judgment and ordered me a Radler instead, which is half beer, half lemon soda, and apparently a perfectly acceptable thing to drink at Oktoberfest when you're not doing the full liter-of-stout thing. The waitress didn't even blink.
Her name was Ingrid. She was from Stuttgart, came to Munich for Oktoberfest every year with the same group of friends. They'd been doing this for fifteen years. They'd started when they were in their mid-twenties, newly employed, finding their way in the world. Now they were in their forties. Some of them had kids now. The group had thinned out over the years—jobs and divorces and deaths—but they still came. Same tent, same time, same songs.
The songs, I realized, were the thing. Not the beer. The songs.
When the band struck up a familiar tune—something about Bavaria, something about friendship, I never did figure out the exact words—everyone at the table stood up. Strangers grabbed their neighbors. The bench bounced with the weight of coordinated movement, people finding each other's hands, forming chains. And people sang—really sang, full throat, nothing held back—and I watched something genuine happen in those moments.
This is what community looks like, I thought. Not curated, not designed, not the artificial community of social media or the professional community of work. Just people coming back to the same place, year after year, doing the same thing, keeping something alive through repetition.
I stayed three days. Each day the tent filled earlier. Each day I found different tables to sit at, different strangers who became temporary companions over liter glasses and chicken and Brezen, which are the pretzels and are extraordinary, the specific chewy saltiness that pairs perfectly with beer or in my case with the Radler that Ingrid kept ordering for me without asking.
Nobody cared that I wasn't drinking. The server who noticed got me sodas without making it a thing. A man at another table who noticed asked if I was driving later, seemed satisfied with the answer, moved on. The culture of the tents, at least in the ones I visited, was less about the alcohol than I'd expected and more about the participation.
On my last day, I went to the back of the grounds, away from the tents. There was a small hill with a monument on top, the Bavaria statue, huge and imposing and somehow not as ridiculous as it sounds. A few people were sitting there, having quiet conversations, watching the fair below—the rides and the games and the chaos that isn't the tent experience.
The tents glowed in the afternoon light. Music drifted up in fragments. Somewhere in there, Ingrid and her friends were singing the same songs they'd been singing for fifteen years, probably already a little drunk, definitely very happy.
I took the train back to my hotel that evening, full of something I couldn't name, already thinking about next year.
The beer is fine. The pretzels are good. But that's not why people cry when they step into the tents for the first time each year.
It's the return. The repetition. The knowledge that you're part of something that started before you and will continue after.
I'm already planning my trip back.
What I didn't expect: the hangover I didn't have. Waking up clear-headed, functional, ready for another day. The people around me were nursing their headaches and I was eating breakfast and feeling smug about my choices.
But also: I missed something. The warmth that comes from being part of something, from belonging to a group that has history and tradition and reason to celebrate. The Radler was fine but it wasn't the same as what they were feeling.
I don't know what to do with that. I'm still figuring it out.
Next year I'll drink or I won't. But I'll be there either way.
