https://edinburgh-oktoberfest.co.uk/ Archives - Jim Murty’s TravelTravelTravel

Drink up Oktoberfest is over… and only three days into the 10th month of the year.

So you’re thinking it should be Septemberfest.

Well, nein… the first Oktoberfest was held to celebrate the wedding of Kronprinz Ludwig Ludwig to Princess Therese on October 10, 1810.

It’s just that it’s been slowly been moved back to accommodate the lighter nights.

And the 16/18 day festival now runs from mid or late September to the first Sunday in October.

Or all year round if you’re two Aussies on the run.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie

It’s a well-told story but my Top Deck double deck bus 10-day trip to the Munich Beer Festival and Austria stretched a little longer.

One year longer to be precise as Brownie and Smutley dropped in on me, if a casual visit describes a 543 mile trip north.

From London to Aberdeen.

Being Aussies, of course, they asked to stay for a weekend and left a year later.

But only after returning to the scenes of my crimes at the Lowenbrau and Hofbrau huises and Kirchberg in Austria.

The original, and still best Oktoberfest may have poured its last stein for 12 months.

But the party still goes on around the world.

Oktoberfest around the world

Embrafest: Oktoberfest in Princes Street

In Edinburgh this October 6, 7, 8 and 9, here where I initiated the neighbour in all things Helga and Hofbrau last year.

And in the greater German diaspora with Kitchener (formerly Berlin) in Ontario, Canada where 700,000 clink steins annually.

The Americans, naturally, would never want their neighbour to outdo them and Cincinatti and Denver run them close.

You might be surprised to know though that Blumenau in Brazil is only surpassed by Munich and Kitchener for visitors.

Lager Down Under

Kick up your heels: Oktoberfest in Munich

Of course Brownie and Smutley could have stayed where they were and enjoyed Oktoberfests in Perth in the Supreme Court Gardens.

Or any of the great Aussie cities.

Mind you as anyone who has been to Munich for Oktoberfest will tell you for those two weeks it is a little corner of Oz.

So the Munich celebrations have wound up when the last lederhosen-dressed Bavarian has called ‘Drink up Oktoberfest is over.‘

But that just means finding your next Oktoberfest bash wherever it is in the world.

Ja, it’s the Herr of the dog.. an Oktoberfest followed by a Pilsener piss-up.

Welcome to my boozie world.

Oktober in Edinburgh I’d forgotten in my 13 years in Ireland turns itself over to resemble the famous Munich Beerfest.

Or at least the party in Princes Street Gardens in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle does.

And that’s where I was with my neighbour (in our Bavarian pigtails of course) clinking steins, dancing on the wooden benches to the oompah band.

And echoing the invitation from the bandstand which all of you who have been to Munich for the Beerfest will know.

Prost

Die Kruge Hoch

Ein Prosit, ein Prosit
Der Gemütlichkeit
Ein Prosit, ein Prosit
Der Gemütlichkeit

All of which means ‘Raise your glasses, a toast to wellbeing’.

Followed, of course, by Oans, zwoa, drei, gsuffa! or one, two, three, drink.

The best Beerfest of course is the original in Germany and I was there for the 175th in 1985 and again in 1986 with a Topdeck busload of Aussies and Kiwis.

And I have left it all this time because I think they might still remember me, the Scot who got up on the bandstand and sang ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean’.

The Beerfest is probably Munich’s greatest export and alas was cancelled this year.

We’ll be back with pigtails on and slap the thighs even louder next year.

Czech this out too

In the Strahov Monastery Brewery in the Czech Republic

And so heavy of head but bright in spirits (that’ll be the schnapps) I Czeched in with my old pals from the Czech Republic.

For a catch-up on how they’re progressing.

And the good news is that they’ve got the red carpet out for us again.

Now I know this from old from clinking glasses and crying Na Zdravi in Prague and Hoptown Zatec.

And all spots in between.

This time around we were treated to the delights of Pilsen too.

Now the Pilsner brewery is one of the top ten most visited tourist attractions in the country and no surprise.

Let’s workshop it

Look at the head on that: Zatec, Czech Republuc

The good folk of Pilsen advise the Pilsner Urquell Draft Beer Workshop, where you can master the correct principles of beer tapping, taught by experienced barmen, during this three-hour course.

The Brewery even offers you the chance to rent a place for yourself in a traditional “šalanda” (a room where beer workers once ate and rested)

And with the kind and wise soundings of our tapman showing us how to do it I glugged my favourite Czech beer down.

It had all started at the Edinburgh Oktoberfest so it was a Herr of the Dog with a Pilsner chaser.

I really am the first among Urquells!