Countdown to the Oktoberfest 2013

What’s today? Well, apart from being a Monday? It’s the thirteenth day before the start of the Oktoberfest 2013.

That means that, after today, there’s only one more Monday on which you have to go to work and on which you might look a bit odd wearing a dirndl or a pair of lederhosen! At 11:00 on Saturday 21^st September, Munich’s mayor – or, to give him his über-cool German title – Oberbürgermeister Christian Ude – will be driving the spigot into the first keg of beer and yelling “Ozapft is!”

As exciting as that all is, there’s no way you can get a seat in Schottenhamel to watch that happening. And even if you do, you’ll be sat there for hours waiting, sweating away in your traditional Bavarian gear without a traditional Bavarian beer: after all, no beer is served until Herr Ude has done his duty.

So, what will we be doing Saturday after next? We’ll be on our way to Munich, actually, maybe enjoying a typically Bavarian wheat beer – Weizen. Once we’re at the Oktoberfest, it’s only Wiesn-beer, of course, which is actually a stronger, slightly more complex lager.

The guys among us will, however, already be wearing our lederhosen: it saves having to pack them into our suitcase and, once we’re in Munich, what else are we gonna wear anyway? To make sure we don’t use up all our good shirts ahead of time though, we’ll be wearing them with t-shirts. Not just any old t-shirt, mind – proper Bavarian t-shirts with the all-important blue-white colours.

The girls might be doing the same: after all, a couple of them started to get jealous of our lederhosen and have invested in a few pairs themselves. A bit different from the typical male leather breeches, ladies’ lederhosen are a little shorter and usually a little more colourful: and although we like dirndls, we’re actually all for this particular bit of cross dressing – so long as we’re not expected to put on skirts and corsets…

Anyway, enough daydreaming: back to work with you! The Oktoberfest will be here soon enough! And if you think it’s too soon for you to buy authentic Bavarian clothing that won’t upset the traditionalists – and get it delivered to the UK – you’re wrong!