Fire up the Oom-pah band, bang the wooden tables with your new best friends and swing your stein to the tune of German drinking songs. Oktoberfest starts tomorrow, and over the next two weeks there will be seven million foreigners and locals eating sausage and and drinking beer for breakfast. Even if you’re not a beer guy (like me) this is still the perfect time tocomfortably don lederhosen, make new friends, and enjoy the concerts and attractions surrounding the main event. In fact, Oktoberfest hasn’t always been a two-week celebration of beer. It started as a wedding reception for local royalty. During subsequent anniversary years brewers started putting up stands next to the royal marquee, predictably the beer was more interesting than the royalty, and Oktoberfest was born. You can expect bosomy waitresses in corseted bodices taking your order and carrying more steins than humanly possible. You can also expect just as many bierleichen, or beer corpses (as locals call the drunken victims of too many steins). And keep in mind that the opening weekend madness could bring even Bacchus to his knees with drunken wide-eyed wonder, but it’s fun do try everything once, right? oans, zwoa, drei, gsuffa!“
