Munich is a wonderful place to spend New Year’s Eve, or Silvester, as they call it here, named after a Pope no less. We had a really fun and entertaining night out in this city. If you’re looking for a great European city to celebrate New Year’s, don’t miss New Year’s Eve in Munich!
Fireworks
They love their fireworks here! Apparently, they are readily available for sale, which is why we started hearing them going off before sunset and all the time after. This also explains the debris in every street into New Year’s Day of firework remnants. The unfortunate thing was, the city was shrouded in fog before 12 midnight so it was pretty impossible to see any of the fireworks, no matter how near.
Tollwood: The Place for New Year’s Eve in Munich
Tollwood is the big New Year’s Eve event at the fairgrounds (near where they do Oktoberfest) in Munich. We weren’t sure how it would be, but took a leap of faith and decided to go. It was a great idea!! We weren’t sure if it would be all drunk young kids, but it was a huge mix of ages and there were a variety of tents with entertainment so we found lots of fun ways to spend the night.
Live Music at Tollwood
There were 4 different tents at Tollwood, with different performers playing all the time. Our favorites were Express Brass Band, with about 20 members who played for hours, into the new year, and the “Alpine World Music” stylings of Vino Rosso. They wore leiderhosen and played to several thousand people in the largest tent on the site. We were dancing up a storm with all the teenagers and retirees and every age in between. Super fun night!
Liederhosen and Dirndles!
Didn’t expect this but a lot of the partygoers in their twenties were all kitted out in authentic Bavarian garb for the celebrations. That’s right: guys in liederhosen and gals in dirndles. They sure looked cute! No idea if this was ironic or serious, but I snuck one photo.
Food and Drink at Tollwood
The food choices were actually pretty thin. We went into the food hall and were surprised there was no authentic German food. No wurst or pretzels to be found! We instead opted for Thai food, which looked a lot better than the burgers they were selling. It ended up being pretty good, but we were disappointed in the food at Tollwood for New Year’s Eve.
On the other hand, the drinks on offer were varied and good. They had all sorts of champagne cocktails like Aperol Spritz and prosecco by the glass, Glühwein and, naturally, varieties of beer. Hacker Pschorr was the brewery of choice, but you could pick from pilsen to helles to weiss to radlers and non-alchoholic too. Plus, unlike in Canada and The U.S., they don’t gouge you with “Event Prices”. We paid a little more than we would on the street but not much. It was worth it for the cool party!
Tollwood NYE Vibe
Considering it was New Year’s and a giant party, people were awesome. We did see a few partiers stumbling, but for the most part everyone was respectful and fun. People danced without pushing each other, and at midnight everyone was waltzing to Mozart! Maybe this is a century’s old New Year’s Eve tradition, but I haven’t seen that one before! I liked it.
We walked back to our hotel through a very heavy fog, it was hard to see feet in front of us, but we managed. Happy New Year, indeed.
Have you been to Munich for New Year’s Eve? Anything we should have done?
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