TULSA, Okla. — Tulsa Oktoberfest’s Corporate Night kicked off the festivities ahead of the festival’s official opening to the public on Thursday.

“I’m so excited!” shared Arcadia Teel, a volunteer with Oktoberfest’s Leadership Team. “We start working on this in January every year, so this is the culmination of a year’s worth of work. We are so excited!”

Teel said she fell in love with Oktoberfest after attending the festival for the first time while she was in college.

“I started coming to Oktoberfest when I was a college kid at Oklahoma State University, and we got a group together to come out here just for Oktoberfest...That got me hooked. So when I moved to Tulsa, I started volunteering then. First with the German-American Society mainly and then about three years ago, I got involved on a more permanent basis with the leadership team.”

Teel encouraged anyone even slightly interested in experiencing German culture to come check out the festival.

“It’s just such a great sense of community, and especially since this year we are the greatest Oktoberfest in the nation for two years in a row—that has never happened before. I mean, if you want to experience real German and Bavarian culture, this is the place to do it...We have real German bands that come out here and play. We have groups of people like myself that try to make this as authentic an experience as possible with the food, with the types of beer. We’ve brought in more different German beers than we’ve ever had before this year, so it really is an incredible cultural experience.”

According to Teel, one of her favorite parts of Oktoberfest is getting to meet new people at the festival each year.

“I just love meeting people, so one of the things I love to do out here, because I speak German, is listen for people who are German. I get to practice. I get to speak again, so for me, it’s just meeting the people and having fun and just talking about Tulsa and how fabulous Tulsa is.”

This year’s Oktoberfest will open to the public on Thursday and will run until Sunday.

To learn more about Oktoberfest, including a full schedule of events, shuttle locations, and ticket information, visit the festival’s website at tulsaoktoberfest.org.