The analysis by a mobile phone provider shows which means of transport people use to travel to Oktoberfest. An Oktoberfest visitor is in a coma after a punch.
All developments in the live blog
In addition to our own research, we use material from the dpa news agency for this live blog.
Important updates
Every fourth visitor to the Oktoberfest comes by car
These souvenirs are particularly popular at the Oktoberfest this year
Oktoberfest visitor is in a coma after being punched
Seven bar waiters in the Paulaner festival tent quit
The SZ reports from Oktoberfest
Every fourth visitor to the Oktoberfest comes by car
Oktoberfest and cars don't actually go well together, but more than one in four visitors come to the Oktoberfest using this means of transport, reports the dpa news agency. This was the result of an analysis of anonymized cell phone data by Vodafone. It also shows when the festival becomes full and when it becomes empty again.
According to the mobility analysis, in the period from the first to the second Saturday of the Oktoberfest, 59 percent of the guests came to the Oktoberfest by public transport. Cars come in second with 28 percent, followed by long-distance transport with seven percent and walking and bicycles with five percent.
Even during the week, Oktoberfest was often well filled. The analysis even counted around 600,000 visitors for Friday. “The Oktoberfest is increasingly being celebrated during the week,” says Michael Reinartz, head of innovation at Vodafone. “The number of visitors during the week was almost the same as at the weekend.” Last year the influx of visitors was much more concentrated on the weekends.
Strolling on family day in the best Wiesn weather
In recent years, one week was usually nice and sunny, the other was cold and rainy. So far this year the weather has been good almost every day without exception. So good that there are a lot of people strolling around the grounds on Tuesday afternoons - and on Family Day, logically, a lot of parents with their children too.
And the good weather, as the previous record of those responsible and emergency services suggests, also has a positive effect in other ways: people are in a better mood, less aggressive and not only the tents, but also the beer gardens are always well attended. The crowd is therefore better distributed. So, at least as things stand so far - with a few exceptions of course - it's a picture book Oktoberfest.
Jacqueline Long
These souvenirs are particularly popular at the Oktoberfest this year
In addition to stalls selling roasted almonds and bratwurst, there are also numerous stalls selling souvenirs. The half-time balance has shown that large and small gingerbread hearts are particularly popular with foreign guests. Just figuring out which label fits best isn't always easy. For example, how do you best translate “Spatzl”, “Fescher Bua” or “Du Bazi” into English or Italian? This is where the salespeople’s translation skills are required.
Also in high demand according to the city: pins – “especially if you can use them to prove your relationship status,” says a press release. Did you know that an edelweiss means “forgiven” and a pretzel means “single”?
Jacqueline Long
Behind the scenes of the flea circus
Have you always wanted to know what exactly is behind a flea circus? My colleague from SZ Nun, the young format of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, took a look at it.
You can read the story about this dying art here:
Bodo’s café tent in a new look
Bodo's café tent is certainly not new, but what is new is its external appearance: This year, landlord Otto Lindinger put up a wooden tent. The bar has moved to the first floor, there is a smoking balcony and the street vending is covered.
Jacqueline Long
Sexual assault on a 31-year-old - paramedics and tent employees intervene
A 31-year-old is in custody after an alleged sexual offense at the Oktoberfest. The man is said to have carried out sexual acts on a 31-year-old woman against the apparent will of a 31-year-old woman on Sunday around 10:30 p.m., according to the police's current investigation. The incident took place on the slope next to the Bavaria, which was decried as a “vomit hill”.
Several medical service employees and an employee of a festival tent observed the incident, reports the dpa news agency. According to the police, two of them intervened, separated the man from the woman and held him until the officers arrived. They temporarily arrested him and took him to the Oktoberfest guard.
According to the information, the woman was looked after by the criminal police and medically examined, and traces were also secured. The suspect was initially taken to the police headquarters detention center. An investigating judge issued an arrest warrant against the man.
Man with life-threatening head injury disappears from hospital
A 56-year-old from the Munich district of Bogenhausen has been missing since Tuesday morning around 1 a.m. The man had recently been taken by ambulance to the Rechts der Isar Hospital with a head injury. At the hospital, serious head injuries were discovered which, according to police, could be life-threatening if left untreated.
The seriously injured man's clothing - including short green leather pants - and the 56-year-old's heavy drinking suggest that the man had previously visited the Oktoberfest. The 56-year-old left the hospital independently at around 1 a.m. and walked away in an unknown direction. He has been missing since then. The Munich police are looking for him through a public search.
Thieves steal cell phones from Oktoberfest visitors and use them to make purchases for 100,000 euros
The perpetrators proved to be masters of their craft and acted in a highly professional manner. But the Munich police's pickpocket investigators proved to be more than their equal. And so, with the help of international colleagues, the criminal police were able to arrest a four-man gang that was causing mischief on Theresienwiese. Their last victim: a 36-year-old American.
The man woke up in his hotel room on Friday morning after watching a film that lasted several hours. The last thing the guest from Maryland could remember was losing his companions near a carousel. When he went to a cell phone shop in the morning with his supposedly defective cell phone, it turned out that strangers had replaced the iPhone with a dummy. The man's electronic bracelet, an activity tracker, was also missing. But things got even worse.
Back at the hotel, the robbed man could see on his iPad that unknown people had now gone shopping with their cell phones and had bought valuables worth around 23,000 euros. This, of course, put the immediately alerted experts from Commissariat 55 on the trail of the perpetrators. One of the thieves could be seen on a surveillance video from a jeweler - and for the French police, the man was anything but an unknown person.
Just hours later, pickpocket investigators from Romania and Portugal recognized the suspect at the Oktoberfest. He was a 29-year-old Frenchman from Nice. He was accompanied by a 31-year-old from the same Mediterranean city. Both were taken to the Wiesnwache. Further investigations led to a hotel in Munich. There, two other suspects, 27 and 34 years old, were found in a room and arrested. All four are known to the police in their home country. They had probably traveled to Munich specifically for the Oktoberfest.
Here they had made rich loot over the course of a week. The investigators discovered numerous high-quality items in the hotel room, including jewelry, clothing and electrical appliances, check and credit cards, and several cell phones. The Munich criminal police put the total value of the seized items at around 100,000 euros. The four suspects were taken into custody.
Oktoberfest visitor is in a coma after being punched
A 52-year-old man from Freising is lying in a Munich hospital with severe head injuries after he was brutally beaten to the ground by an unknown man on the edge of the festival grounds shortly before midnight on Monday. This was preceded by a dispute between two groups of people at the Wiesn exit at Pettenkoferstrasse 37. The background to the momentous altercation is still completely unclear. The police are therefore looking for a rickshaw driver as a witness. The man and his companions wanted to get into his bicycle cab.
According to police, the 52-year-old was already sitting in the rickshaw. However, he then got out again and went to the group of around four people with whom he and his companions had previously clashed. According to the police, a French-speaking man punched him so hard in the face that the man from Freising collapsed and hit his head uncontrollably on the asphalt. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. One of his companions, a 21-year-old German, apparently the victim's son, tried to intervene. But he was also attacked and received a punch in the face. The unknown perpetrators fled.
The 52-year-old was taken to hospital and had to undergo emergency surgery that night. According to police, he was still in a coma on Tuesday afternoon. “The severity of the injuries sustained cannot yet be estimated,” said a police spokesman. The main perpetrator is described as a slim, dark-haired man. He is said to have been wearing a gray or light blue shirt.
What is the Oktoberfest – magical or dangerous?
“The Oktoberfest is usually magical,” says filmmaker David Dietl. Addiction helper Jasmin Skowronek from the Blue Cross Munich, on the other hand, sees it completely differently: “For me, it’s a dangerous place.” Millions love the madness that takes place every year on Theresienwiese, dance in the tents, and let themselves be driven through Schaustellerstrasse. But just as many - or at least that's the feeling - reject unrestrained partying: they avoid the hustle and bustle and are happy when the city sobers up again at the beginning of October.
That's why my colleague Katja Schnitzler and I asked people to sit at a table in the Tradition marquee at the Oidn Wiesn to talk about the largest folk festival in the world, about the fascination, but also the abysses. In addition to David Dietl and Jasmin Skowronek, the following also took place: cabaret artist Claudia Pichler, marquee musician Kleo Leike and the Munich innkeeper Florian Schönhofer. Is there still a tradition at all? Where does the Oktoberfest unfold its magic? Or is a visit even risky? Our interviewees did not agree on any of these questions; they discussed passionately but also listened to each other. Nobody is neutral about the Oktoberfest.
King Ludwig's dream of Olympia on the Theresienwiese
While Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) and Munich Mayor Dominik Krause (Greens) symbolically celebrate the acceptance of the Olympic bid in the “Olympic Looping” roller coaster on Theresienwiese, King Ludwig I was already dreaming of “Olympics” on these same surfaces. The Bavarian king was considered a fan of Hellenistic culture. The monarch, whose son Otto later became King of Greece, envisioned a festival in the style of the ancient Olympic Games. King Ludwig died in 1868 and the Olympic Games in Athens were not revived until 1896.
An international competition would have further increased the fame of the royal family and the residential city of Munich, wrote the folklorists Florian Dering and Ursula Eymold in their documentary “The Oktoberfest 1810 - 2010,” reports the dpa news agency. As early as 1835 there were athletic games under the direction of the gymnastics teacher Josef Gruber. The disciplines were based on the ancient ideal with wrestling, javelin throwing and a Greek competition on horseback. At that time, gymnastics and athletics were already on the rise with “gymnastics father Jahn”. This also had an impact on the events at the Oktoberfest.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, the folk festival had a sporting character. According to historians, there were mainly horse racing and shooting, but also gymnastics performances and artistic cycling. Horseback riding continued in the hippodrome marquee until the early 1980s. The more guests from all over the world flocked to the festival, the more sporting activities disappeared. To this day, relics of this time, such as shooting competitions and beer mug lifting, are a tradition at Oktoberfest.
Seven bar waiters in the Paulaner festival tent quit
Opinions differ somewhat as to how this came about, but one thing is certain: there were waitresses instead of waiters in the Paulaner festival tent on Monday evening and in some cases there still are.
The reason: A bar waiter was fired, and six others left out of solidarity. Service circles say that the bar waiter ate something outside of his break, and the innkeeper's spokeswoman says that two bar waiters were caught drinking beer and then became abusive towards landlord Lorenz Stiftl.
One thing is certain: Afterwards, several waitresses helped out in the taverns, including two master brewers from Paulaner who happened to be in the tent, and three bar waiters from the neighboring Hacker-Pschorr festival tent. And, the spokeswoman assures us: Tomorrow every bottleneck will be resolved anyway, then bar waiters will come from other establishments that the Stiftls run.
In any case, the people in the tent seem to have noticed little of all the excitement: they stand on the benches and celebrate to the music.
How the protagonists experienced the journey
It is rare to see politicians from different parties in such intimate unity as here in the photo finish of the loop. A visual proof that sport unites across (almost) all borders. At least for the public.
How was the loop ride? To get a quote, my colleague Heiner Effern has to chase Prime Minister Söder for half the Oktoberfest. It is said: “It was good. But once is enough.”
Sprint on towards the commercial yard. And for you, Mr. Krause?
"It was fun," says the mayor - and praises his co-driver: "Respect for keeping his promise."
