No half measures as Oktoberfest celebrates its 200th anniverary
Friday 13, August 2010
With a cry of o’zapft is! (it is tapped!), Oktoberfest will once again open its doors this September for just over two weeks of thigh-slapping-om-pah-pah-merriment!
With this year’s 200th anniversary festival set to break all records, use WhichBudget.com, the global cheap flights search engine, to find low cost flights to Munich from 18th September to 4th October, so you don’t miss out on the greatest beer festival in the world...probably.
Six million people head to Oktoberfest every year to consume staggeringly large amounts of locally brewed beer (664,400 litres in 2009) in tents the size of Aladdin’s cave, surrounded by yodelers, folk bands and women in Dirndl (traditional Bavarian dress with full skirt, apron and bodice). Hearty pork knuckles, whole chickens and pretzels bigger than your face are on hand to help stave off the hangover – so get involved and party like the Bavarians this September.
For the first time since 1938, and in the spirit of the first ‘Wiesn’ held on the 12th October 1810 to celebrate the marriage of the Crown Prince Ludwig I to Princess Therese, the festival will be opened with a horse race on a nearby track as well as the not-to-be-missed Grand Parade.
Not just for the beer-swigging students and stags, Oktoberfest is also a heavily family orientated festival with an expansive fairground full of merry-go-rounds, rollercoasters, dodgems, candyfloss, and the newly designed laser tunnels of the Alpenrausch ride; just remember to keep hold of your valuables. Last year, as well as the more standard items left in lost and found, such as mobile phones and cameras, there were also four crutches, a wig and even a ship in a bottle!
WhichBudget’s top tip for surviving the event is to tip your waitress! Aside from the impressive fact that the buxom beer wenches wander seemingly effortlessly through the tents carrying large numbers of impossibly heavy beer-filled steins, they are also the only way to get served. To get a drink in one of the tents you must be sitting down (barring of course the infamous ‘Pig Pen’ in Hofbräu where beer-drinkers risk being stripped of their bras and boxers if they break the slightly unusual, ‘no underwear’ rule!), so, whip out the big tips in the first rounds and you’ll get great service.
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