Munich Oktoberfest - stories that I heard in my travels..

Writing my first blog about Munich, I thought of starting with what every local loves to talk about - beer.

Munich is almost synonymous with Oktoberfest and during my visit to Munich City, I learned a lot of interesting stuff regarding this festival.

In 1810, when King Ludwig married princess Therese, as a gift for the bride the king bought a meadow for his bride. But women, as is the case, will never be impressed by a piece of land and the king had to improvise mentioning that this land would be named after the queen. When this too failed to impress the would be queen, the king declared that as part of the wedding celebrations he would throw a huge party for everyone. And it was a glorious celebration with drinking and dancing.
The next year, when it was time after the harvest, the people of Munich remembered this celebration and instead of having a smaller celebration went to the King requesting that he throw the same party as last year and thus the tradition of Oktoberfest began.

People from all around the world visit Munich during this time to enjoy the beer. But Americans and Aussies beware - 1 litre of Augustiner beer is equivalent to 9 bottled beers. So when the Aussies come to Oktoberfest, the Munich locals joke about the fact that they can't hold their beer. 

There are some quite interesting statistics about the Aussies that I was told about in my visit to the city. It is rumoured that when an Aussie comes to the Octoberfest, he is told to always keep track of 2 things - their passports and their children. Some of the statistics say that among the so many people of different nationalities that lose their passports during the fest, Aussies always make it to the top of the leaderboard. And 2 years back, out of 38 children in the lost and found booth, 27 of them were Aussies.

There is a funny story around why Aussies lose their passports, and it goes this way - it is believed that every year there is a competition among the the Bavarian towns. Each town appoint a woman leader, and during this fest whoever collects the maximum number of Aussie passports wins a big barrel of beer. Last year someone collected over 280 Aussie passports. How they managed to achieve this is a very good question 😉

Now in Germany, it is illegal to travel anywhere without an identification document. Unfortunately the closest Australian embassy that can provide replacement passports is a 7 hr train ride to Berlin. But Aussies, God bless them, are always the cheerful lot, and during the festival, they have a temporary embassy opened up within the UK embassy in Munich.
 That is quite awesome.