The world’s biggest beer festival kicked off on Saturday as six million revelers are expected to attend the Oktoberfest at Munich. City Mayor Dieter Reiter started the traditional Bavarian culture by opening the first beer barrel and poured a drink for himself.
The oompah music began playing as the beloved frothy beverage flowing for the 16-day event. However, the capital of Bavaria had to plan the annual party as it became the flashpoint of “Europe’s migrant crisis.”
A total of 20,000 people, most from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq flee from war and persecution and arrived on the place over the last two weekends. Happily, they were accepted in the country warmly by the public with outpouring support and donations.
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Moreover, the yearly alcoholic drink celebration marks its 182nd anniversary even though it started 205 years ago. The festivity was interrupted during the “two world wars, cholera outbreaks, Napoleon’s invasion of Bavaria and the hyperinflation of the 1920s.”
The guests all around the world usually have to wear the traditional “Tracht,” leather shorts for men called “lederhosen” and “dirndls” for women, or the pleated smocks paired with low-cut blouses. Meanwhile, an LGBT group fought their place to have a spot at the table of the Germany’s giant beer festival called Gay Oktoberfest on Sunday.
They wore blue checkered shirts, brown pants with “embroidered braces and wild tufts” and hot pink hair, which became a tradition on the annual affair. After it began three decades ago, the “Pink Wiesn” was added to be part of the “global gay party calendar.”
The two Los Angeles native Jamez Rozeboom and Trent Dempsey, the couple who chose to celebrate their wedding engagement with two huge glasses of the famous German beer. “I just love the fusion of the traditional with gay culture — it’s a wonderful feeling,” said Jamez, who’s actually a bar manager.
“We didn’t want to miss this while we were in Europe, especially after we got engaged,” his partner Trent added. The Gay Oktoberfest happened every Sunday each year on its opening weekend at the “Wiesn fairgrounds’ Braeurosl tent,” it was named after the legend beauty Rosi, who’s the daughter of the Pschorr beer dynasty.