This clip from Wednesday's Telegraph is not good news for anyone thinking of attending this year's Oktoberfest! I've never been to the event myself, although I've been to Munich several times. It's one of my favourite cities and on past visits I have enjoyed sampling the wares of it's big six breweries (Augustiner, Hofbrau, Hacker-Pschorr, Lowenbrau, Paulaner and Spaten), especially in the relaxed setting of Munich's numerous beer gardens. (Incidentally the aforementioned are the only breweries allowed to participate in this two-week festival of beer-swilling and general over-indulgence.) They all brew a special Festbier for the event, and at a strength of 6% abv, perhaps the price doesn't seem quite so steep, but swilling beer of this strength by the Mass (litre), in the infectious, carnival-like atmosphere of the Wies'n may not be quite such a good idea, especially the following morning!
Having said that, I still wouldn't mind going, but as the Oktoberfest is an event that is definitely best enjoyed in the company of friends, I would need to persuade some like-minded companions to accompany me, and plenty of readies to spend on the beer! I'm not going to regurgitate all the statistics about how sausages, roasted chickens, pork knuckles and of course litres of beer that are consumed at the event, or how many million visitors attend, but for the sheer scale of the festival, it would be something to see.
I've already sorted out my holiday arrangements for this year, but if any hardy souls fancy going along in 2011, please get in touch.
2 comments:
Not a big rise, but a big price to start with!
Never got the appeal of Oktoberfest myself. I've never been but it just seems like an over priced, over attended event with loads of beer that all tastes very similar.
The idea of battling it out with 1000 american college students to pay a silly amount for a litre of helles just doesn't appeal to me. Am I missing something?
Chunk.
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