Day 6: the 173rd Oktoberfest!

checked in and rolled right over to the fest. its amazing. so many people, so much beer and meat and bread. huge carnival rides, rollercoasters, games, etc. lots of people dressed in traditional german costumes…

had a brotwerst, as many liters of beer as I could hold down, met this couple from puerto rico, verry nice, verry funny, we hung out for a couple hours and talked about our travels, and they told me stories about the italian police in munich, since there were so many italians there for the fest they actually bring up whole stations of police to help with the hundreds of thousands of extra people staying in munich.

finally got inside a beer tent (not easy, many require reservations and the lines start at 7am. was probably luck that I got in at all) after it closed I got lost and had some other random meat on bread product that I ordered by pointing at what looked most delicious.

a couple numbers i found:
over the 16 days of the fest about 6 million people visit, its the largest fair in the world!!!
there is seating for 100,000… thats just seating.. and finding a seat is damn near impossible.
30% of the year’s production of beer by Munich breweries will be consumed in the two weeks of Oktoberfest, with a total of over 6 million mugs of beer sold, a mug is a approx a liter of beer (2 – 2.5 pints)
the fest employs 12,000 People, and over 1600 of those are waitresses (with verry strong arms)
Roasted oxen: 88
Sausages: 219,443 pairs
Roast chickens: 459,279
(all verry delicious I might add)

Prost! Salut! Cheers!

Filed by pete at September 29th, 2006 under Europe 06