Downing a stein or ten at the Oktoberfest

The world’s largest public festival, the Munich Oktoberfest, kicks off on the third Saturday in September and keeps pumping day after day for a full two weeks. Known locally as the “Wies ‘n” after the sprawling Theresienwiese park in which it takes place, it was first held to celebrate the wedding of local royalty but is now an unadulterated celebration of beer and Bavarian life, attracting seven million visitors and seeing over four million litres of beer disappear in sixteen days.

At the heart of the festival are fourteen enormous beer tents where boisterous crowds sit at long benches, elbow to elbow, draining one huge litre-capacity glass or “stein” after another. If you’re up for annihilation, head to the Hofbrau ten at the weekend, go for the ten-stein challenge and join the thousands of youngbloods braying for beer. If you actually want to remember your time at Munich, or to encounter some real Germans, pitch up midweek and take in two or three of the other beer tents. Whenever and wherever you go, you can count on one thing – within two steins you’ll be laughing with your neighbours like long-lost buddies and banging the table in time with the Oompah bands.

The busiest time to visit Oktoberfest is the first weekend, when the “Grand Entry of the Oktoberfest Landlords and Breweries” starts the whole thing off as participants attired in Bavarian finery (lederhosen, basically), decorated carriages, curvaceous waitresses on horse-drawn floats and booming brass bands from each beer tents parade through town, joined by several thousand thirsty locals and international partygoers.

The local mayor gets things going by tapping the first barrel of Oktoberfest beer at the park’s entrance and declaring “Ozapftis”, which means “it’s been tapped”, but translates more accurately as, “Why doesn’t everybody get as wasted as possible in my town for the next two weeks and don’t worry about the mess because we’ll clear up?” Huge cheers rise up from the crowd as the mad dash to the cavernous beer tents begins.