Lent might be a period of abstinence, but Bavarian monks decided centuries ago that drinking highly alcoholic beer helped their fasting. Thomas Barkley explains Munich's <i>Starkbierzeit</i> tradition.
Loud, proud and fiercely independent, Bavaria is Germany’s Texas. But are laptops starting to beat out lederhosen? Lois Jones takes the former kingdom’s temperature.
The extra tough security measures deployed to combat terrorist threats at last year's Oktoberfest in Munich will likely become a permanent requirement, organisers said over the weekend.
Organisers of a petition for a referendum to strengthen Bavaria’s porous smoking ban are celebrating on Thursday, as preliminary results show they exceeded the amount of necessary signatures by several hundred thousand.
With just three days left for people to sign a petition for a referendum to strengthen Bavaria’s porous smoking ban, organisers told The Local on Monday that they have collected more than 80 percent of the required signatures.
On the final day of Munich’s Oktoberfest, the city’s mayor said a series of terror warnings had contributed to a “noticeable” drop in revelers to the world’s largest beer festival.
A 25-year-old English tourist fell to his death from a Munich hotel window after drunkenly trying to use it as a loo, police in the German state of Bavaria reported.
Munich authorities on Monday tightened security checks at Oktoberfest and detained two suspected Islamists just days after terrorist threats led them to declare airspace above the festival a no-fly zone this weekend.
Oktoberfest is booming despite the bad global economy, with 100,000 more guests downing a <i>Maß</i> or 10 in the first week compared with last year, organisers reported Sunday.
A no-fly zone has been established in the skies over Munich’s Oktoberfest from Saturday onwards to prevent terrorists crashing planes into the massive crowds.
Organisers of Munich's venerable Oktoberfest have updated the beer festival for the 21st century with a line of boozy mobile applications for the iPhone.
Gay Sunday, the homosexual “mega event” giving new meaning to men in leather trousers at Munich’s Oktoberfest, takes place each year on the first weekend of the world-famous Bavarian beer bash.
Attempts to restrict filming and photographing scenes of drunken debauchery at Munich's Oktoberfest this year has provoked accusations organisers of the beer bash are impinging freedom of the press.
Four days before the world's largest beer festival begins, a German court has ruled that a motorcyclist who collided with a drunken pedestrian during Oktoberfest in 2006 was partly to blame because she should have expected the road to be full of party-goers.
The average cost of a litre of beer at this year’s Oktoberfest will be €8.44. And while Germans might moan about the 3.8 percent increase from last year’s price, it’s still cheaper than what many tourists pay for brew back home.
Visitors to Munich’s world-famous beer bash Oktoberfest will have to dig even deeper in their pockets for a one-litre <i>Maß</i> of delicious amber nectar this year, with prices set to climb up to €8.60 per mug.
Police in Munich say they have an important new lead in their quest to find a woman who was filmed by three men as they drugged and raped her during Oktoberfest two years ago.
The German festival association DSB wants Munich’s <i>Oktoberfest</i> to be added to the UNESCO’s list as an Intangible Cultural Heritage element, daily <i>tz</i> reported on Tuesday.
Cold and clammy weather at this year’s Oktoberfest might have put some visitors off beer, but it also apparently encouraged people to cuddle up for warmth – and buy more condoms.
Some six million people braved rain and cool temperatures to hit the <i>Wiesn</i> and chug 6.6 million pitcher-sized mugs of beer at Munich’s 175th Oktoberfest which ended on Sunday.
There's no dress code at Oktoberfest, but the pressure for women to make a fashion statement via their choice of dirndl is great. One prominent female visitor though, has spawned “dirndl-gate” by rejecting the garment in favour of a more modest jacket.
