Starkbierfest Munich: when regular beer isn’t strong enough

Finally we’ve made it to that time of year again – time for a beer festival in Munich. Starkbierfest is a lot like Oktoberfest, with a few key differences:

• Different beer (duh). Starkbier is very strong and so sweet it’s practically undrinkable.
• No smoking! Smokers have to go outside. Your throat will still hurt from shouting your conversations all night.
• Starkbierfest takes place in the banquet halls of the breweries around town, rather than in tents at the Wies’n.
• Um… Starkbierfest is a wee bit smaller than Oktoberfest. And possibly a little less famous.

Other than that, Munich’s two big beer annual beer festivals are pretty similar. Lots of dirndls and lederhosen, beer by the Maβ (liter), drunk people dancing on long wooden benches, and a band playing ‘Country Roads’, ‘Cowboy und Indianer’, ‘Walking on Sunshine’, and ‘Skandal’ over and over and over again. That’s just the way they party here in Munich.

In comparison to last year, a couple indicators let us know that the Global Financial Crisis of Doom has hit Munich’s Starkbierfest, too. For example, even at the steep toilet price of 35 cents, customers are only allowed one squirt of hand soap each. Use it wisely.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the security budget obviously shrank, as well. Instead of real security guards, they could only afford the fashion police. At least they did a pretty good job of controlling the dirndl and lederhosen faux pas (when not directing traffic around fresh piles of sawdust on the floor).

Luckily all this didn’t seem to influence the level of drunken revelry, which was substantial, as always.