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Visitors wait inside a festival tent for the opening of the traditional Bavarian Oktoberfest beer festival at the Theresienwiese in Munich, southern Germany, on September 21, 2013. The world’s biggest beer festival Oktoberfest will run until October 6, 2013. (AFP Photo /Christof Stache)
Single-minded revellers gathered for the world-famous Oktoberfest beer festival Saturday, hoping the heady atmosphere of ale, lederhosen and oompah music will not be flattened by Germany’s election fever.
The first keg was opened for the 180th edition of Munich’s Oktoberfest to the traditional cry of “O’zapft is” (“The keg is tapped”) by Social Democrat mayor Christian Ude, flanked by Bavaria’s conservative state premier Horst Seehofer.
But on the eve of close national elections, the two leaders from rival parties kept politics off the agenda as party-goers, many sporting traditional Bavarian costumes, kicked off the 16-day celebration of the amber nectar.
A day after Chancellor Angela Merkel rallied about 7,000 supporters in the city, a conservative heartland, for another four-year term, election posters were nowhere to be seen around the gigantic beer fest site near the heart of Munich.
“Today we forget everything, it’s a party,” retired nurse Gabriele Wahn, 65, from western Saarland state said, admitting she liked the atmosphere but did not drink beer.
“We’re not talking about politics. Politics is only for tomorrow, for the vote,” she added.
Inside a huge beer tent, the economic crisis which has divided politicians in the race for the chancellery is little in evidence — waitresses in Bavaria’s low-cut dirndl dresses and waiters in lederhosen leather shorts ferry litre-sized glasses, known as a Mass, of frothy beer up and down the aisles.
“The crisis? No, it hasn’t affected me,” said Thomas Peekl, a student from the wealthy neighbouring region of Baden-Wuerttemberg. “The German economy is solid,” he added, saying he would vote on Sunday for Merkel’s conservatives.
Masses of giant pretzels, pork, dumplings and other traditional Bavarian foods were being washed down with the beer.
“It’s true, tomorrow we have to go and vote. That’s why we’re drinking one less beer — just one, mind,” joked Holger Arendt. Continued…
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