An Oktoberfest Waitress’s Day: The Unvarnished Reality

The first beer mug marks the start of a marathon for Oktoberfest waitresses. As hundreds of visitors in lederhosen and dirndl dresses clap through the countdown, the servers line up at the bar, ready to carry one-liter mugs to the tables.

Marie Ranger is one of them. She will spend all 16 festival days moving between the bar and the benches, sometimes carrying 10 mugs to a single table. “I’m a little worried that I won’t be strong enough,” she says, wearing a gingerbread-shaped name badge marked Marie.

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I’m a little worried that I won’t be strong enough.

Ranger, 24, starts early on opening Saturday. At 7:30 a.m., four and a half hours before the first beer is poured, she leaves the Schwabing subway station in a blue dirndl and green apron, the uniform worn by Hofbräu waitresses. She takes an immune-boosting drink every day because she hopes not to fall ill during the festival.

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Honestly, it’s not my world.

This is Ranger’s second year working at Oktoberfest, although she has never lived in Bavaria. Her mother spent decades carrying liter mugs at the festival without being Bavarian, and the two women traveled to Munich together for registration last year. Ranger admits that the setting is not really her world. She prefers techno parties and came from Hamburg with two dirndls, six blouses and two aprons.

She says vomiting in her section happened only three or four times last year. Aggressive men also proved less frightening than expected, tending to flirt more than act aggressively. This year, a special app can summon security immediately. Still, Ranger is most concerned about her own stamina as the waitresses work nearly nonstop and walk more than 20,000 steps a day.

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Last year, it wasn’t as bad as I imagined. They tend to flirt more than act aggressively.