Oktoberfest by night

Oktoberfest is a 16-day beer festival that is held every year here in Munich. It runs from late September to early October. For more information and facts about Oktoberfest, here's the link to the entry in Wikipedia.

The Oktoberfest this year ended a few weeks ago - this was my second time experiencing it. During this festival, about 6 million liters of beer, 500k chickens and 200k pork sausages are consumed (based on 2003). The festival sees about 6 million visitors and about a billion EUR is spent during that time (based on 2003). That equates to about 1 liter of beer per person. That sounds decent enough but if you assume half the visitors to be children, it comes to 2 liters of beer per person. I could go on speculating and making my own assumptions but I'll stop my rambling for now.

I don't know the statistics for this year but I heard that the numbers dropped a bit. This was probably primarily due to the current financial crisis and to a lesser extent, some terrorist threats. Regarding the latter, I have to say that the German authorities did a splendid job and beefed up security tremendously. Of course, it was a little cumbersome for visitors but definitely safer - from terrorists at least (I heard an unvalidated report that there was a spike in crimes against women during this Oktoberfest).

Here are some photos of the Oktoberfest that I took from my apartment.

(Above) The Oktoberfest during the day. You can't see much of it in this one but if you look closely, you'd notice a ferris wheel - that's the Wiesn (the famous grounds where the festival is held every year).

(Above) You see much more of the festival at night. The lights from the Oktoberfest do indeed light up the sky. I had to use a tripod for this. I used ISO100, f16 and a 30-second exposure.

(Above) Once again, the Oktoberfest by night. I decided to catch more of the well-lit sky in this one.

joel@shutteria.com