http://www.oktoberfest.de/en

World's Beer Drinkers March to Munich Oktoberfest

Thousands of beer drinkers from around the world, many in traditional Bavarian lederhosen, flocked to Munich on a sunny Saturday for the largest and most famous beer festival on earth, the Oktoberfest.


Munich mayor Christian Ude opened the two-week festival at midday, cracking open the first 200-liter keg with the customary shout of "O'zapft is" -- the keg is tapped.


That was the signal for an army of brawny waitresses in traditional dirndl dresses to start heaving liter glasses of specially brewed lager to the thirsty crowds as oompah bands churned out endless jolly drinking songs.


Outside in the brilliant sunshine, crowds eating sausages, ice cream or gingerbread strolled past fun rides and food stalls, while inside the tents, beer drinkers locked arms and roared along with the bands.


"The mood is great, the weather, the atmosphere, everything's just right," said Alfred Niederreiter, on a visit to his home town with his wife after a decade of living in eastern Germany.


By the time the 170th Oktoberfest ends on October 5, some six million visitors are expected to have passed through 14 enormous tents, each capable of holding up to 10,000 people at a time, and to have drunk over 5.5 million liters (1.453 million U.S. gallons) of beer.


The consumption of food is equally impressive. Last year the visitors consumed 219,405 pairs of pork sausage, which lined end to end would stretch for more than 50 km (30 miles).


They ate 87 oxen, 58,746 legs of pork and almost half a million roast chickens, and organizers are expecting a similarly gargantuan total this year.


CELEBRATION


The Oktoberfest began life in 1810 as a five-day celebration of the wedding of Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildenburghausen and has developed into an annual extravaganza of food, drink and folklore, spawning tributes and imitations from Chicago to Hong Kong.


The festival is one of Germany's biggest tourist events, attracting visitors from all over the world, employing some 12,000 people and generating almost one billion euros ($1.13 billion) for the local economy.


"The color, the warmth of the German people, the beer, seeing everyone having a good time, it's fabulous," said Marco Ferrari, who drove up from Milan with a group of friends.


This year's festival opens a day before state elections which are expected to deliver another landslide win to premier Edmund Stoiber and the conservative Christian Social Union which has governed Bavaria for the past four decades.


Stoiber himself drew huge cheers from the crowd as he entered the festival's main tent although a chorus of boos and whistles also broke out when he mentioned the upcoming election.


Security has been stepped up at the 31-hectare main site after the arrest earlier this month of a group of suspected right wing extremists who police believe were plotting a bomb attack on a Jewish center in Munich.


But authorities have found no signs of any plan for a repeat of a bomb attack on the 1980 Oktoberfest, when 13 people died. ($1=.8852 Euro)