The Bayern mistake!

Following on from my NYC trip (June 2016) I was quickly turning my attention towards the next trip: Bayern (Bavaria) in Deutschland!

Long term readers of the blog may remember previous mentions of my favourite German, Nicole, on trips to Salzburg (Oct 2014) and Bavaria the first time around (Aug 2015). The romance was long gone but we’d stayed good friends and I couldn’t help but be tempted by a European gig tour.

A band we both enjoy listening to were touring the UK and Europe in 2016 and as I scoured through the tour dates I was pleased to find they were playing in München (Munich) on a Friday night! “That is perfect!” I thought. I can book the Friday off and have myself a weekend trip to Munich in September!

Consequently I ran the idea past Nicole, who said she’d love to go, and put a little pin in the calendar for that weekend. I knew NYC was going to be expensive, I needed to save my pennies beforehand but as soon as I was home I’d look in to flights and accommodation for Germany. 

So off I went and had a week away in NYC. I had a fantastic time, as you can read about in previous posts, but I couldn’t dwell on that for too long – it was time to start planning again!

Having been a year earlier (Aug 2015) I had a rough idea of what a weekend in Munich should cost me. With August generally being Europe’s peak travel month due to the school holidays and summer weather (it had been close to 40C in Germany in Aug 2015) I was looking forward to a slightly cheaper weekend away.

I was WRONG! Flight prices for Munich were obscene! Accommodation in Munich was either sold out or obscenely priced. What’s going on? How can it possibly be this much in September compared to August?

One explanation was that dreaded word that has been on everybody’s lips for the last three years – Brexit! My NYC trip was perfectly timed, the £ to $ exchange rate was fairly decent but my “wait until after NYC” approach came back to bite me on this trip. I returned home from NYC in June 2016, just before the Brexit vote which saw the pound nosedive following the result.

Even so, it’s still way too expensive in Munich for that to be the sole cause. What am I missing? Is there a big event going on in September that I don’t know about? Bayern Munich are playing at home but that can’t be it, you can see football in Munich every weekend. The only other time I’d expect Munich to be this expensive would be..

”Oh no..”

Oktoberfest! I suddenly remembered, Oktoberfest overlaps in to September doesn’t it? Still, I’m looking to visit in the middle of the month! Surely Oktoberfest isn’t this early?

Wrong again! Septemberfest as it shall henceforth be known was running from September 17th until October 3rd in 2016. Three days? Are you kidding me?
I was looking for flights on September 16th. I’ve only gone and invited myself to Munich for opening weekend of Oktoberfest! Of course it’s bloody expensive you idiot!

I’ve always wanted to visit Oktoberfest at some point but this wasn’t the trip for that, so now what? Referring back to that dreaded B word that every Brit is sick of hearing about, I had a similar problem of my own. I’d made the decision to go to Munich but with further clarity and new information do I follow through? What do I do?

It was clear that if I wanted to still go to Munich it was going to be a BAD deal but on the flipside “gig means gig” right? An agreement was in place and I didn’t want to go back to “Europe” (Nicole) and say I’d changed my mind. I hadn’t changed my mind at all, I definitely wanted to go to the gig but it was under very different circumstances than I’d anticipated.

On the plus side it didn’t take me three years to resolve my little problem, just a couple of weeks, maybe I should be our new Prime Minister (ha, no thanks!).
Anyway I’m getting sidetracked, let me get back to the story. Plan A was out of the window so I had to focus on finding a plan B. I’m committed to going to this gig so where else can I fly to, where else can I stay?

My best, or perhaps preferred option was to stay in Nicole’s hometown Augsburg if not Munich. Unfortunately it seems other Septemberfest attendees had similar ideas and were venturing out of Munich. Trains between the two cities run regularly and aren’t too expensive so it makes sense but meant I was effectively paying Oktoberfest rates in September whilst staying in another city. Still much cheaper than hotels in Munich of course but somewhat frustrating.

As far as flights go I ended up finding flights to ‘Memmingen Munich’ – not actually Munich at all but fortunately I was a little more aware of Ryanair’s practices. Fool me once maybe but I wasn’t going to get caught out by Ryanair too! Their flight prices are unrivaled but part of the reason for that is they fly to tiny airports in the middle of nowhere.

Memmingen is actually worthwhile flying to, particularly if (unlike me) you’re looking to go to Oktoberfest but just be aware the town is actually 70 miles away and you’re going to have to make your way to Munich from there. I do have some sympathy for those poor souls unaware flying to Memmingen on October 4th and finding they’re miles away and have missed the festival.

Fortunately things worked out for me. Yes, I suffered a small blow to my bank balance but it was a nice lesson for me and something I took in to other trips. A year later I completely avoided going to Boston as the weekend I was looking to visit clashed with the Boston marathon and was not a weekend I wanted to be in town haha.

The bigger reason it worked out though was that I still got my weekend to Germany. More on Memmingen, Augsburg and Munich to come soon!

Stay tuned!

Jason