Hacker News Reader

Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Munich-born dude here. I'm glad when it's finally. fucking. over. even though it wasn't as bad as it used to be this year in public transport, no idea why - usually all kinds of trains are packed with people drunk out of their mind.

The problem is that a lot of prime real estate is taken over by an army of hotels that are only at ~50-60% load on average [1] but packed during Oktoberfest and the Bauma trade fair with prices skyrocketing to hundreds, even thousands of euros per night [2]. On top of that come all the more or less legal AirBnBs which are just as much of a goldmine, with Oktoberfest yielding enough to pay for a whole year worth of rent.

Fuck that completely unsustainable shit. I'm sick of the exploding rents, cost of living in this shithole of a city, and by the looks of it I'll be out in a year.

[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/319560/umfrag...

[2] https://www.merkur.de/lokales/muenchen/oktoberfest/oktoberfe...

View on HN

> a lot of prime real estate is taken over by an army of hotels that are only at ~50-60% load on average

Isn’t this a textbook case for Airbnb (or something akin to it)? Residents live year round, except during the festival, when they rent out their homes?

Put another way, would the hotels be open to long-term leases which black out the festival?

> Isn’t this a textbook case for Airbnb (or something akin to it)? Residents live year round, except during the festival, when they rent out their homes?

I lived above an AirBnB until the actual landlord shut that shit down. AirBnB is a fucking pest even without Oktoberfest, but during it it's even worse. NO ONE wants hordes of drunkards stomping through the stairwell at 03:00 in the morning. There's a reason accomodation providers are a regulated business.

> Put another way, would the hotels be open to long-term leases which black out the festival?

Who can afford that? Even at 50€ a night it's 1500€ a month with barely more than a bed and a shower.

I used to live right next to the Wiesn (on the place with the St. Paul’s church) and we‘d have strict orders to keep the gate to the buildings yard closed at all times during Octoberfest or the potted plants would die due to urea oversupply.

I believe I spent one year in Munich during the Wiesn, and then fled town every year.

I lived for a year on Bavariaring. After I woke up from the smell of someone having taken a shit in the garden right below my window despite a locked fence/gate, I fled the area. Cheap rent had its reason...

I loved the area, except for the Octoberfest. People leaning on the church walls, puking. No way to use any public transport station nearby. Hordes of drunks moving from/to Hackerbrücke. Unbearable. Unbelievable if you haven‘t seen it.

> NO ONE wants hordes of drunkards stomping through the stairwell at 03:00 in the morning

Isn’t this directly what the rent premium pays for? Segregated revellers. Either that or you nuke the festival, with the economic repercussions that brings.

One can’t legitimately complain about the hotels while rejecting co-residence without banning the Weisn. (Granted, illegitimate complaining and slaughtering golden geese are a hallmarks of modern German politics.)

> this shithole of a city

I've lived in Munich and it's one of my favorite cities in the world. I'm from Nashville and I mostly hate it, though people seem to love it. I think you are experiencing a severe bias if you think Munich resembles anything close to a "shithole." It has amazing parks, great transportation options, a good vibe, hikes within a short train ride, etc. It has tourists and big events? Oh, no...so like every big city on Earth? Avoiding Wiesn is actually extremely easy, unlike other massive events in other cities.

I've lived in Munich for like what, 29, years of my life. It's seriously gone down the drain. Born there, went to school there, went to uni there, went away, and came back 8 years ago.

Housing is unaffordable if your parents haven't died and passed you a sizable estate, if you need childcare you have to register a year before planned conception (obviously exagerrated, but you get the point), good luck finding a doctor if you're not having private insurance, public transport is utterly nuts, cops will relentlessly hunt you down for smoking a blunt or beat you up for daring to host an outdoor rave, and there's fucking traffic everywhere.

Ok, a lot of people feel this about their cities they view through the lens of the past. I think the same of Nashville, but I at least acknowledge I am extremely biased and basically just a grumpy 30+ year old. Munich is easily one of the best -big- cities in the world. Literally everything you just said could be applied to virtually every large city on Earth. Munich has roughly the same population as Manhattan, it is a huge city and yet is clean, safe, accessible, has great transit, close to tons of lakes and the Alps. I know Germans are fairly pessimistic, so not really surprising to hear this, but also, I will vouche that it's not really in touch with reality when you compare it to cities of similar sizes in Europe and the US.

> Munich is easily one of the best -big- cities in the world.

That's the usual problem with relative comparisons. When the competition is cities with people defecating on the sidewalks (SF), half the city being bought up as a wealth store for Russians and Chinese (London) or places with incompetent politicians (Berlin), even a run-down place like Munich stands out. And the conservative clowns holding the Bavarian government hostage for decades does all it can to fuck up the city even more (see e.g. the years of the Bezirksregierung Oberbayern throwing wrenches into the C-series subway or tram trains, or how the state and federal government completely blew the 2. Stammstrecke train tunnel project), just to help out the local Conservatives which really aren't liked in Munich by acting like the SPD/Greens government is at fault for the issues.

Seriously, I demand better from politics than to be happy with being the best among mediocrity. Germany is the fourth-richest nation in the world by GDP, the most powerful economy in the EU. We can do better than that.

> places with incompetent politicians (Berlin)

What makes you think that, stuff like the Mietendeckel?

The complete inability of reforming the Senate vs Bezirke competences chaos is the biggest practical issue for me. The biggest meme issue was to time the last election right alongside the Berlin Marathon which completely predictable led to utter chaos.

I guess they had no choice about the election date, but yeah they should have realized this when they approved the marathon date. And even disregarding that they really should have planned much better, as you said it was predicable there would be immense chaos that day.

The most perplexing thing in recent memory for me was that they had digitized things like apartment registrations during covid yet undid it at some point. What sense does that make?

As another Nashvillian(sp?), I definitely understand the difference between how a city is viewed by tourists and by locals. I don’t mostly hate Nashville, but I basically hate Broadway, 12 south, basically everything everyone thinks of as Nashville

One of the problems in Munich is that all rapid public transport goes through the city centre, there is no loop around it like in Berlin. If you commute to the west you have to go through Hackerbrücke station - that's the one close to Theresienwiese, where Oktoberfest is. Same goes for the subway, Munich has very centralised hubs where the lines cross, hard to avoid.

Just to be the counterpoint: I'm also born in Munich and I like this city quite a lot. Certainly not a shithole, IMO - and that's the main reason why rents are as insane as they are. If not even Freiham, a big new city quarter which is currently being build, is able to put a dent into the rising rents, then I doubt replacing the extra hotel capacity would be a game changer either, IMO. Munich just grew way too quickly without scaling it's infrastructure accordingly.

I don't disagree with most of what you said but (and I might be misremembering) but the "grew way to quickly" doesn't hold up.

When I was in school I learned the number "1.3m people" and that was the early/mid 90s, now it's 1.5m. So unless you start counting a more widespread urbanization of the adjacent towns.. the math doesn't seem to work out.

I do agree that it feels a lot worse than 20 years ago.

Right, "way too quickly" probably isn't the right word, "faster than infrastructure and housing" would probably be better. :)

Just to present a balanced view for our international audience: a significant number of locals sincerely enjoy Oktoberfest. Within my circles in the Munich tech/startup scene, a visit to Oktoberfest with the team is often considered one of the year’s highlights in terms of team building and socializing. People attend with friends, family, etc. The infamous images of inebriated tourists merely represent the most attention-grabbing outliers, overshadowing the majority who simply have a splendid time there.

Munich does have its share of issues, rent being a notable example. However, most of these problems are likely a result of the general lack of serious troubles, relatively speaking, which in turn boosts the city's attractiveness.

Yes, Oktoberfest is the reason why Munich is so expensive. (Eyeroll)

The hotel plague definitely contributes to the problem. Take alone the Motel One Orleans x Rosenheimer Straße [1]. The 7000 m² would have been a lot of space that could have been used for a rental block, and to make it worse Motel One already has a hotel less than 10 min walking time on Orleansstraße. Or the FIVE HOTELS they built in the former Werksviertel [2]. Or yet another hotel in Hochstraße [3]. And that's just what has been going on over the last few years in my hood - I can reach any of these destinations in less than ten minutes with my bike - , not including what goes on near Central Station which already has the highest density of hotels in the entirety of Europe [4] and yet there are more projects under construction, often at the expense of housing and small businesses.

And all of this is only made possible by Oktoberfest and Bauma, because the extraordinary rates paid for during that time cross-finance the rest of the year.

I'm fucking fed up with hotels, I'm fed up with AirBnB, I'm fed up with tourists. Enough is enough.

[1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/rosenheimer-strasse-hai...

[2] https://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/muenchen/hotelflut-im-m...

[3] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/haidhausen-hotels-novot...

[4] https://www.focus.de/regional/muenchen/muenchen-weil-ein-hot...

I do like the Wiesn (and just came back from there) and live in Haidhausen which does not get so badly affected by the drunkards, but the whole hotel, airbnb and office space crap is getting too much. That is not sustainable.

If you're interested in meeting up for a beer at Tassilogarten: email is in my profile ;)

> The 7000 m² would have been a lot of space that could have been used for a rental block

Isn't that like 80 apartments? That's not going to bring down housing costs in Munich materially. Millions of people live there.

You'd need 10s of thousands of new units to bring down prices materially.

> Isn't that like 80 apartments?

That's the size of the entire property, so (depending on what you build / how high) ~28.000 m² of resulting space or about 450-ish 60 m² apartments), so enough living space for 1000-1500 people.

> You'd need 10s of thousands of new units to bring down prices materially.

Agreed, but building hotels that are only fully occupied once every year for Oktoberfest and once every three years for Bauma is a waste of highly valuable real estate.

Munich has about 94k hotel beds in total [1], and less than 10k homeless [2]. Close the hotels, give the place to those who actually need it.

[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/319424/umfrag...

[2] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/zdf-mittagsmagazin/muenchen-b...

Would be interesting to have some hard data with comparison for other cities like Hamburg, Stuttgart, etc. (probably not Berlin, as it's too much of an outlier). How many hotels, how many beds, in comparison to how many people.

Come to lower franconia dude

In America, we love events that are boons to our local economies, even when it inconveniences us personally.

If the profits would stay in the local economies, maybe I'd not be so pissed about it. But a huge chunk of the profits ends up at international hotel conglomerates and beer breweries - the only one still independent is Augustiner, everyone else got bought up - and their shareholders.

Thanks but no thanks.

all the breweries that operate tents are local breweries. other operators are local clubs, or local (family) businesses.

> all the breweries that operate tents are local breweries.

The brewery is local, but the profits go elsewhere:

- Löwenbräu, Spaten, Franziskaner: Anheuser-Busch-InBev

- Hacker Pschorr: doesn't even exist as a brewery, the brand is owned by a local construction baron and Heineken, the beer is brewed by Paulaner.

The only independents (made a mistake above, it's actually two) are Augustiner which is privately held and Hofbräu which belongs to the government.

That certainly is false as a general statement. In America, you will see countless complaints similar to those coming from /u/mschuster91. This makes sense, since many of those inconvenienced don't reap any economic benefits from it.

Most of the locals do enjoy the Oktoberfest (speaking as someone from there). It is a fun two weeks of the year and the entire city enters a special kind of mood.

But it is not surprising that the HN crowd would find it distasteful. People here are definitely not the type for these kinds of festivities.

Don't get me wrong: I have no problem with drinking beer, I used to be able to down an entire case of Augustiner in my best days in one night. Personal record at Oktoberfest is something around 6-7 Maß.

The problem I have with Oktoberfest is that it's gotten way out of hand, it's too much impact for the local population for way too little gain for common people - and it's increasingly unaffordable: 15 euros for a liter of beer? That's bloody ridiculous.

> 15 euros for a liter of beer? That's bloody ridiculous.

Better cross Norway off your vacation list, then!

People in Norway earn way more money than Germans do [1], that offsets the high taxes on alcohol.

[1] https://www.handelsblatt.com/karriere/norwegen-arbeitszeit-h...

And what about compared to Munich/Bavaria? Munich is very rich by German standards and doesn't seem to be too far off compared to Norway.

Munich locals pay the most expensive rents in Germany, and those who have the cash to buy are facing the second-most expensive real estate market in Europe [1].

[1] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/panorama/immobilien-preis-eur...

> Most of the locals do enjoy the Oktoberfest

Most of the locals certainly don't.

Obviously such a generalization can't be true.

When the Olympics come to town?

When Fleet Week comes to town?

When the giant music festivals happen in the parks?

When the big awards show takes over the tourist area?

When SF tourists make our ski mountains require paid parking on the weekends?

People grumble..

In Washington, D.C., every May we get Police Week. Which is to say our drunk tourists have badges and guns and short fuses.

No one in Washington loves this "boon" to our local economy.

Oh, and ask people who own houses in Tampa's Hyde Park neighborhood what they think of Gasparilla.

Usually people/cities appreciate event and tourism business and money (and lament its loss, as during covid) but dislike the crowding and inevitable anti-social behavior that you can run into.

That being said, I've read some positive comments regarding tourists recently, noting that they are often enthusiastic about parts of your town that you might be jaded about or have written off as useless tourist areas but might actually be something that locals could enjoy as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com