Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Oktoberfest Ist Here!!

  The official Okotberfest 2012 poster design., Copyright Oktoberfest.de



Who would want to be in a party where you could drink the best beer in the world? I know that I definitely would!! In fact, travel to Germany during the Oktoberfest is part of my bucket list. As you can see, I haven't experienced yet, but nonetheless I wanted to do a little research and tell you some facts about this appealing tradition.

Oktoberfest takes place every year in München  (located in the south of Germany, it's the third largest city of the country) starting on the first Saturday after September 15th, it usually lasts 16 to 18 days. This year it started on September 22nd and will end on October 7th. 

The first Oktoberfest took place in 1810 to celebrate the marriage of King Ludwig I, where all the citizens were invited to attend the festivities held on the fields, specially the horse races that marked the end of the event and were the reason to continue the tradition (they stopped doing them in 1960). Since then, it has been canceled 24 times due to several reasons, including cholera epidemics and war.

In our days, the festival starts when the Mayor of München taps the first keg of beer at 12:00 o'clock. After that, visitors from all over the world can take a seat in the tents, enjoy the music, taste the food and drink the many different German beers that are offered.

The festival receives approximately 6.4 million visitors each year, who drink around 7,100,000 liters of beer in those famous big jars. Hopefully, I'll be one of them someday, and I will be able to tell you more about this cool German festivity.   

If you have more information regarding Oktoberfest or want to share your experience, please leave a comment below.

Cheers!!

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfesthttp://www.oktoberfest.de/en/.