Cannstatter Volksfest is Stuttgart’s answer to Oktoberfest in Munich. Apparently German tradition says that you can’t call it an ‘Oktoberfest’ if you’re not in or near Munich. So, the city of Stuttgart started their own beer festival in the neighborhood of Bad Canstatt, and it’s a people’s fest, giving it the name Canstatter Volksfest. You’ll also hear people refer to the Canstatter Wasen or just Wasen, which refers to the fairgrounds where the event is held. Regardless of the proper vocabulary, if you were to ask where Oktoberfest is, locals would point you towards the festival. And what a festival it is!
Like the more well-known event in Munich, the Canstatter Volksfest draws a crowd. Stuttgart, a city of about 620,000 residents, gets about 5 million visitors per year during festival. People from all around the region and all around the world flock to the Wasen to eat, drink, and sing random songs at the top of their inebriated lungs with friends and strangers alike. The beer tents in Stuttgart appear to be about the same size as the ones in Munich, each holding about 5,000 guests, but Stuttgart’s Volksfest doesn’t have as many tents as Oktoberfest in Munich.
A reserved table in one of the tents will run you about $80 per person with a 10 person minimum. This includes guaranteed admission (otherwise it’s first-come, first-served), an assigned table for your group for a specific 4 1/2 hour window, 3 1-liter beers per person, and half a roast chicken per person. The chicken can be swapped out for other food on the menu, which we quickly took advantage of. After we got about halfway into our first beers, we realized that putting something solid in our stomachs would be the smart move. The table was soon covered by giant pretzels, a meat and cheese board, and all kinds of other good food. Rather than sitting down to eat like civilized people, we stood around drinking, reaching to the table to pick at whatever food happened to be nearby at the time. It seemed to work for us; despite drinking 3 liters of beer each (or about 9 12-oz bottles), we were all fully coherent and functional when we left the tent. Our table was ideally located both near the band and by an open walkway, which gave us plenty of room to stand and mingle without being constrained to our seats.
Outside of the tents themselves, the fairgrounds are full of snacks and treats, from chocolate covered strawberries to roasted caramelized nuts, and from giant heart-shaped cookies to Bavarian pretzels. If you’re up for it, and the beer hasn’t hit you too hard, there are rides galore. Bumper cars, roller coasters, haunted houses, and other rides designed to get your adrenaline pumping are all available for a small ticket price.
The Canstatter Volksfest is similar in many ways to Oktoberfest in Munich. It seems to draw more locals with fewer tourists. This doesn’t pose a language barrier in any way, since Germans who live in any of the major cities speak English as well as (and sometimes better than) native English speakers, but it does provide a different feel to the event. You spend your time in the tent among the locals and it feels like a more authentic beer festival experience. In some ways, it’s just as chaotic and rowdy as Oktoberfest is, but it feels tamer at the same time. Between Volksfest and Oktoberfest, if you had to choose between the two, I’d suggest Oktoberfest. It’s bigger, a little crazier, and it’s more well-known.
From what I’ve heard, there’s a wine festival in Germany every year. That might need to be the subject of a future post. Drinking wine from 1 liter mugs; what could possibly go wrong?
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