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Oktoberfest in GermanyCelebrate With Beer, Oompah Bands and Lots of Great Food
Oktoberfest is celebrated throughout Germany with beer, bratwurst and other favorite foods, music and good cheer. The two largest festivals are in Munich and Stuttgart.
Oktoberfest and Germany go together like good beer and good friends. The largest festival is in Munich, the capital and largest city in Bavaria, also famous for Neueschwanstein, the mountaintop castle built by King Ludwig II, and familiar worldwide as the fairy tale castle pretty much copied by the Disney folks for Cinderella. Even though there have been harvest festivals as far back as the Egyptians and the Incas, the whole Oktoberfest thing began as a wedding celebration. Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, later crowned King Ludwig I, wanted his people to share his wedding happiness in October 1810, and offered his subjects a party of food and beer. It was such a success that the Oktoberfest continued annually long after the honeymoon was over. The Munich Oktoberfest attracts some six million visitors a year, to some three dozen tents, nearly each one erected by a local brewer and serving only that label’s beer, plus endless trays of food and non-stop entertainment. Löwenbräu, Spaten, Augustiner, Hofbräu, Paulaner and Hacker-Pschorr are the most famous Munich breweries, each with their own circus-sized tent seating 5,000 or more at a time. During the day, Oktoberfest is a family affair, with performances and rides for the kids. At night, it becomes serious socializing, and on any given day you can party hearty with around 100,000 of your closest friends. Oktoberfest beer comes in two flavors -- Pils, also called Helles, the German word for light, and a darker and heartier brew called Dunkel, the German word for dark. There's also a special Oktoberfest brew called Wiesnbier, darker and heartier even than Dunkel and not to be confused with the light summer wheat bear Weissbier, served with a lemon wedge. Oktoberfest beer comes in one size, the one-liter tankard or glass mug, called ein Mass. If you want a smaller half-liter, you pretty much have to beg for it. Be sure to give the waiter or waitress juggling a half dozen glasses in each hand the right of way. These mugs are heavy even empty -- there's less breakage when glass is thick -- and really heavy when there's a bunch full to the foam in each hand. The Munich Oktoberfest is Sept 22 to Oct 7,2007, so if you have not yet booked your hotel room, you could be out of luck finding anything within 50 miles of the city. But fear not -- Germany's second largest Oktoberfest is in Stuttgart, a short train ride or drive north on the famous German Autobahn. The Canstatter Volksfest, or People's Festival, is from Sept. 29 to Oct. 14, so it is possible to commute between the two. Just don't drink and drive. At my last visit to the Stuttgart Volksfest, there was dancing on the benches, not on the tables. Dancing on the tables would mess up the beer and the food. Aah, the food. Copious amounts of bratwurst, goulach, spaetzle (German dumplings) served with or without cheese, rotisserie chicken and pig knuckles roasted until the meat is fork tender, hidden inside a protective coating of extra crispy skin. It's called schweinshaxe in most of Germany, and Gockele in Stuttgart. This is no place to worry about calories or cholesterol. The Volksfest originated a few years after Munich's, in 1818, to celebrate the end of a period of bad harvests and starvation. Of course, Stuttgart is famous for more than being home to Germany's second largest Oktoberfest. Stuttgart is home to Mercedes Benz and Porsche, two car companies you may have heard of. There are two others in Munich -- BMW and Audi in the suburb of ingolstadt. Volkswagen is headquartered in Wolfsburg. If you link the three cities on a map, they make a neat triangle. The Mercedez-Benz Museum is an adventure in automotive history, from the first 'horseless carriage' designed by Gottlieb Daimler in the late 1800s to today's sleek sedans and sports cars. No drooling is allowed on the iconic 1952 red 300SL, the one with the lift-up gullwing doors that is every visitor's favorite. Other exhibits focus on technology, including space travel. The Porsche Museum houses both race cars and grown-up toys with names Carrera GT, 911 and Targa. For more on Oktoberfest, read this related Suite 101 article. Germany and Oktoberfest is more than beer and bands. It is history, adventure, good food and new friends. Prosit!.
The copyright of the article Oktoberfest in Germany in Adventure Travel is owned by Evelyn Kanter. Permission to republish Oktoberfest in Germany in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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