German Traditions and Festivals - No1: Oktoberfest - the renowned Munich beer festival
With this blog post I am starting a new series about German traditions and traditional festivals that bring together friends and family. These are very popular photo opportunities and the snapshots are happy memories for years to come.
When I checked my facebook account during the last few weeks, it was very obvious what was happening in Munich: Lots and lots of new photo albums - people evidently wanted to mark a special occasion and share it with the world.
People were tagged in photos as Bavarian lookalikes with big beer steins - the "Mass" - in their hands, wearing traditional Bavarian clothes, a "Dirndl" or a "Lederhosen". It was, of course, "Oktoberfest" time again, or "Wiesn" as the locals call it.
Photo by: Hendrik Nicolaus
The world's largest "Volksfest" attracts some six million people every year and is an event where friends and family from all over Germany as well as tourists from all over the world come together to celebrate one of the biggest parties in the world. For about 16 days, every hotel room, hostel bed and couch is booked in Munich. This festival even changes the look of the city itself. Everywhere you go there are people in traditional clothes - girls in Dirndl and guys in Lederhosen. It has even become fashionable for tourists to wear the traditional Bavarian clothes. Of course this look has to be documented by many many photos and shared with friends and family afterwards.
Photo by: Michael Lingelbach
Every year, new superlatives await: 5.7 million people came to Wiesn09, drinking 6.5 million litres of beer and taking millions of photos of course. Google Image search for Oktoberfest 2009 shows 2.670.000 photos, there are 15.838 Oktoberfest 2009 photos on Flickr and the Oktoberfest Facebook Fanpage has more than 23,000 fans. Some photos are really artistic, showing the rides and the enormous size of the "biggest beer festival in the world", but on most of them you can see people enjoying the party, smiling and having fun together - Oktoberfest time is definitely a time to smile. As part of the series "The big picture - News stories in Photographs" the Boston Globe showcases outstanding Oktoberfest photos.
However, Oktoberfest originally was not about pretzel and beer. The very first "Oktoberfest" occurred almost 200 years ago. For the commemoration of their marriage on October 12, 1810, Crown Prince Ludwig (later Kind Ludwig I) organized a big horse race on October 17th for Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen (namesake of the Theresienwiese festival grounds). Today, the Munich Oktoberfest starts on the third weekend in September and continues until the first Sunday in October - in these days always incorporating October 3rd, the German Unity Day. If you are interested in the full Oktoberfest history, you can find all details on the Oktoberfest - Wikipedia entry.
If you are a very keen Oktoberfest visitor you can already tick off the days until the 177th Munich Oktoberfest in 2010 - the Oktoberfest homepage shows the countdown.
Photo by: Hendrik Nicolaus
Kodak Germany created a Wiesn09 Photo group so if you have been at Oktoberfest 2009 don't hesitate to upload your best shots to the group. You have the chance to win a Kodak Z950 Digital Camera (Entry deadline is the end of October). Best of luck!
When I checked my facebook account during the last few weeks, it was very obvious what was happening in Munich: Lots and lots of new photo albums - people evidently wanted to mark a special occasion and share it with the world.
People were tagged in photos as Bavarian lookalikes with big beer steins - the "Mass" - in their hands, wearing traditional Bavarian clothes, a "Dirndl" or a "Lederhosen". It was, of course, "Oktoberfest" time again, or "Wiesn" as the locals call it.
Photo by: Hendrik Nicolaus
The world's largest "Volksfest" attracts some six million people every year and is an event where friends and family from all over Germany as well as tourists from all over the world come together to celebrate one of the biggest parties in the world. For about 16 days, every hotel room, hostel bed and couch is booked in Munich. This festival even changes the look of the city itself. Everywhere you go there are people in traditional clothes - girls in Dirndl and guys in Lederhosen. It has even become fashionable for tourists to wear the traditional Bavarian clothes. Of course this look has to be documented by many many photos and shared with friends and family afterwards.
Photo by: Michael Lingelbach
Every year, new superlatives await: 5.7 million people came to Wiesn09, drinking 6.5 million litres of beer and taking millions of photos of course. Google Image search for Oktoberfest 2009 shows 2.670.000 photos, there are 15.838 Oktoberfest 2009 photos on Flickr and the Oktoberfest Facebook Fanpage has more than 23,000 fans. Some photos are really artistic, showing the rides and the enormous size of the "biggest beer festival in the world", but on most of them you can see people enjoying the party, smiling and having fun together - Oktoberfest time is definitely a time to smile. As part of the series "The big picture - News stories in Photographs" the Boston Globe showcases outstanding Oktoberfest photos.
However, Oktoberfest originally was not about pretzel and beer. The very first "Oktoberfest" occurred almost 200 years ago. For the commemoration of their marriage on October 12, 1810, Crown Prince Ludwig (later Kind Ludwig I) organized a big horse race on October 17th for Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen (namesake of the Theresienwiese festival grounds). Today, the Munich Oktoberfest starts on the third weekend in September and continues until the first Sunday in October - in these days always incorporating October 3rd, the German Unity Day. If you are interested in the full Oktoberfest history, you can find all details on the Oktoberfest - Wikipedia entry.
If you are a very keen Oktoberfest visitor you can already tick off the days until the 177th Munich Oktoberfest in 2010 - the Oktoberfest homepage shows the countdown.
Photo by: Hendrik Nicolaus
Kodak Germany created a Wiesn09 Photo group so if you have been at Oktoberfest 2009 don't hesitate to upload your best shots to the group. You have the chance to win a Kodak Z950 Digital Camera (Entry deadline is the end of October). Best of luck!
 |
Rating
Comments
Your comment will not appear right away as this page needs time to update. Please check back a little later to view your comment.
Add Your Comment
Posted By: gruner tee (10/21/2009)
Comment: Hi,
I really, really enjoyed this. It was an awesome post. You did a cool job with these photos man. I'm amazed with all this. Thanks for doing it.