Oktoberfest 

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but you shouldnt drink too much

+SimonHellinger Sorry. I am a bit late. The real Oktoberfest is in Munich, and it's just the biggest Volksfest, which is Kind of a Festival that happens every year in every town in Bavaria. The rest is just fake.

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peggyt1243 Did you know that Kitchener used to be called Berlin? It was renamed during World War I

I knew it used to be called Berlin but I thought it was the second world war. Either way it is Kitchener now.

peggyt1243 named after the British equivalent of Uncle Sam at the time, iirc

For the same reason the "October Revolution" in Russia took place on the 27th of September. The 27th of September in the Western "Julian" calender is the 10th of October in the Eastern "Gregorian" calender.

No, that's not true; and in any case the Gregorian calendar, not the Julian calendar, is the new calendar. The Holy Roman Empire (which included Bavaria) adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1582, centuries before the first Oktoberfest. Because the Gregorian calendar was introduced by a pope (Pope Gregory XIII, hence the name "Gregorian"), Catholic areas like Bavaria were more open to it. Also, the Russian October Revolution took place on 25th October in the Julian calendar (which Russia was using at the time), which in the Gregorian calendar is 7th November.

Munich, Munich, and Munich. Passau, Regensburg, Straubing (while the Gäuboden festival ;))

Drezden

drunken Bavarian When I eventually go, I will bear those places in mind, if I was to go down as far as Nürnberg it would be impossible for me to not visit München, as a Football fan. And as someone who likes beer, Oktoberfest is a must for me, just need people to go with who would be up for that.

szeproza I have always wanted to visit some of the former East German cities, such as Dresden, Leipzig, Rostock, the glamour of the 'Western' stuff only goes so far, and in Britain most places are exactly the same, so something not 'Mainstream' would certainly be worth a visit for me, from pictures online Dresden does look a lovely place

Ryan Christopher Dresden, Leipzig and Rostock are definitely worth visiting. If you go to Dresden, take the chance and also visit the Elbe Sandstone Mountains!

I don't know the specifics, but it's not the beer itself that catches fire (obviously). Some part of the brewing process results, in warm weather, in an increased fire risk. There will have been lots of straw around, and on hot, dry conditions you really don't want to be setting fire to it.

rewboss sounds like an old wives tale that one... Wouldn't the grain have been threshed before the malting process so not sure why there would be straw around? Anyway interesting stuff all the same. You should do one on the Reinheitsgebot, because there is a lot of myth around that (the original text didn't mention yeast as it wasn't known about at the time) and the law as it stands today which is the German Beer law. For completeness would also be good to do a comparison with the process of brewing English real ale which has v little CO2 in it and uses stuff like isinglass to speed up the process of the yeast going to the bottom of the barrel. Ah but you don't like beer :-)

I'm guessing about the straw catching fire, but there's always straw lying around the place, threshed or otherwise.

rewboss Somehow I had to think of "Warum liegt denn hier überall Stroh rum?" ;-) Ah well, internet memes... Still, the straw would have been on the floor, while whatever's left over from brewing would be in a tank or a tub or something...But I guess it's something one would have to research about in order to find out why there was an actual danger of fire.

All the German sources I could find are anecdotal and only mention "higher risk of fire in the beer brewing process"; although I actually think that that wasn't the main reason for the ban. Just think about it - if the economic incentive to produce beer is high enough (beer to sell, sales tax to collect) I'm sure people and also rulers wouldn't have been content with just banning the production, but instead probably would have thought of a way to deal with the risk (remove flammable material, build stone compartments, etc.). The actual, much more plausible reason is one of quality control: The popular beer type at the time was produced in the so-called bottom-fermented brewing process, and for that kind of brewing, you need temperatures of around 10°C, which were just not possible to achieve during the hot summer months. So production was banned in order to keep the market from being flooded with low-quality beer which was brewed at too high temperatures.

Much less crowded? It's the second largest folk festival in the world with nearly five million visitors every year.

rewboss Well, everything's relative, I guess. What I meant was that you get more or less the same experience without quite so many drunk people vomiting everywhere :D That's my experience, at least. Also, as someone who doesn't really go there just to get drunk, I found that the Wasen seems to offer more things to do... That might just be because I know Stuttgart much better, though ;)

And what about the »Hamburger Dom«, the »Bremer Freimarkt« or the »Hannover Schützenfest«? Every »Kirmes« or »Schützenfest« is technically a “October Fest” [!]. Certainly, there are a lot local differences, but basically it's almost the same. In my area (East-Bavaria) old historic feasts are called »Dult«. And, such feasts can have a really long tradition, a longer tradition than the Munich Oktoberfest; e.g. in Passau the »Maidult« dates back to 1655 and the »Herbstdult« even back to 1164. And, the Straubing »Gäubodenvolksfest«, which is the second biggest feast in Bavaria with approx. 1 Million visitors within 11 days (in a town of 48000 inhabitans) was first held as agricultural feast of the »Unterdonaukreis« (today known as »Bezirk Niederbayern«) in 1812 as a local branch of the original Munich Oktoberfest - in Passau.

Martin Steindl I should be more accurate: North-Eastern Germany. Anyway, the other way around it works better: Every October Fest is a "Volksfest". ;) The only fests we have in my region is an annual fair and the annual "city/town/village birthdays". I guess that's enough. Those festivities have other, for me more understandable, origins and todays functions than the October Fests.