No its not OCTOBER FEST,its indeed OKTOBERFEST the spelling is right! This is a little different becoz its german. You might see the word being used all over the world, but the origin and the original OktoberFest is held infact in Munich, Germany. A good friend of ours had visited germany last week and was explaining us about this. Which is when we learnt that its actually a relatively unknown but famous festival in germany. Precisely, this is how the festival has become popular – Word of Mouth! Nobdoy advertises for it and yet surprisingly millions from across the globe flock the small city of munich every year!
I learnt its an ” An autumn festival that emphasizes merrymaking and the consumption of BEER“. So thats the fest. Drinking barrels and barrels of BEER. Indeed a place to be isnt it? Remember european beers are much popular than the tame american ones ( source: Mr.Sudhar 🙂 ) This year’s Oktoberfest started on Sept 18th and came to an end on German National Holiday, 3rd October 2004. In total, 5.9 million people visitied it inspite of the bad weather and the best part is a whopping 5.5 MILLION litres of BEER was consumed ( meaning : went into the bellies and into the drains eventually! :)) ).
The immediate question that came to my mind was why is it called Oktoberfest when its actually held in September? Apparently, It was first held in 1810 in honour of the some Prince marriage to some Princess. Then, the festival began on October 10th and ended on Oct 17th with a flamboyant horse race. Even the following years the festival continued to happen the same way, but eventually festival got so popular and prolonged that they moved it earlier in September to start with. In additioan, the warm days and less chilly nights of september helped people enjoy the gardens outside the tents and “Die Wiesen”, the fields outside ][learning some german here : heheheh].
“The MaB” is the man! Most important of all the BEER in the fest. MaB is a one litre Beer, imagine a liter costs almost 7 euros and thats 40 Million Euros right there! The highlight of the events is Oktoberfest Costume and the Rifleman parade
The next Oktoberfest is on 17th of September 2005. Lets seee if we can challenge sudhar’s belly there?
