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World's beer fans meet for Munich binge
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-19 10:38
A waitress carries
one-liter beer mugs during the opening day of the Oktoberfest in Munich
September 18, 2004. Millions of beer drinkers from around the world will
come to the Bavarian capital Munich for the world's biggest and most
famous beer festival, the Oktoberfest. The 171st Oktoberfest lasts from
September 18 until October 3.
[Reuters] | International squads of beer drinkers,
leather-clad Bavarians and devotees of excess young and old converged in Munich
on Saturday for the start of the planet's biggest beer festival, the
Oktoberfest.
Over the next two weeks, beer drinkers are expected to guzzle more than six
million litres of beer -- enough to fill around six Olympic size swimming pools
-- and chomp through vast quantities of food during the world-famous orgy of
consumption.
Dressed in leather shorts, or lederhosen, Munich mayor Christian Ude got the
festival under way at noon to the cheers of an impatient crowd by cracking open
the first 200 liter keg with the traditional shout "O'zapft is!" - the keg is
tapped.
With Germans dismayed by years of weak economic growth, high unemployment and
the onset of painful reforms, Ude told Munich's Abendzeitung newspaper the yell
captured the essence of the festival's importance.
"One shout and all of us -- otherwise such dependable moaners and worriers in
the vale of tears that is Germany -- turn into rustic good-natured sorts whom we
wouldn't even want to meet in the street during the rest of the year," he said.
By the time the 171st festival ends on Oct. 3, organizers are hoping more
than six million people will have made the pilgrimage to its 14 massive beer
tents that seat up to 10,000.
Inside the vast Schottenhamel pavilion where the beer frenzy kicked off,
Norbert Eckert, a ruddy-cheeked, moustachioed veteran of 15 previous
Oktoberfests was stunned by the turnout.
"I've never seen so many people here for the start as this year," said
Eckert, a 54-year-old mechanic from Dormagen in western Germany.
The origins of the Oktoberfest date back to 1810 when a lavish five-day
celebration was held all over Munich to mark the wedding of Bavarian Crown
Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen.
With its huge influx of tourists, the festival creates work for some 12,000
people and generates close to a billion euros in revenues for the
city.
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