MUNICH – The beer tents at Oktoberfest were packed Saturday even before the mayor of Munich, Christian Ude, had officially inaugurated the annual festival beer with two whacks of a hammer to open the first keg.
This year’s Oktoberfest, set to run till Oct. 4, is the first at which smoking is banned. Munich is standing by for 6 million visits.
At noon, Ude, wearing Bavarian leather shorts and a green apron, performed the traditional opening ceremony: hammering a tap into the first wooden barrel of beer using a 3-kilogram hand mallet. He then handed out mugs of beer to VIP guests.
No beer was allowed to be served in the marquees before noon, but many of the huge tents set up by city breweries were already so crowded with expectant revelers wearing traditional Bavarian dress that they were closed to latecomers.
This year’s Oktoberfest, the 177th, marks the bicentennial of the event, which began as a horse race to amuse the public on the occasion of a Bavarian royal wedding and gradually developed into a festival of beer under royal patronage.
There have been lapses in the series since 1810 because of wars and cholera epidemics.
This year’s Oktoberfest has been stretched from the habitual 16 to 17 days in length. A small separate area has been fenced off for re-enactments of Oktoberfest 19th-century style, with sales of pale ale that reproduces the beer taste of 1814. Daily galloping races by sturdy draught-horses will recall races held on the site from 1814 to 1938.
The Oktoberfest site is now densely packed with funfair rides and the marquees. The no-smoking rule follows legislation that came into force in the state of Bavaria on August 1, but it will not be actively enforced.
Municipal organizers said they would turn a blind eye to smoking inside the marquees, because it will be another year before the grounds can be remodeled to create open-air smoking areas where revelers can take refuge. However, breweries said they have told waiters to ask guests to stop smoking inside the tents if they begin.
“This ban was decided by referendum and the public has spoken,” said Toni Roiderer, spokesman for the brewers’ committee. He appealed to tourists to eat and drink a little more to compensate for the sacrifice of not smoking.
