MUNICH -- Oktoberfest is open.Mayor Dieter Reiter officially started Oktoberfest at noon Saturday when he inserted the tap into the first beer keg, signaling the 189th start of the festival.Thousands of beer lovers celebrated in the Munich fairground as the first to clink their mugs during the world’s largest folk festival.Servers immediately began ferrying trays — each carrying up to 8 glass mugs — to tables.
Revelers started clinking their mugs and taking deep gulps of beer in the stuffy heat of the tent.The celebration runs through Oct.
6 in 18 large tents covering the Theresienwiese fairground.This year’s festival includes stepped-up security in the wake of a deadly knife attack in Solingen, a city roughly 470 kilometers (292 miles) northwest of Munich.The violence on Aug.
23 left three people dead and eight more wounded, and the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, without citing evidence.As a result, organizers added metal detectors to the security lineup for the first time in Oktoberfest’s history, but said there were no concrete threats.Tens of thousands of people lined the streets early Saturday to watch the opening parade as others raced to claim tables inside the tents.
They gossiped, played cards and walked around the fairgrounds to check out the food options and amusement park rides to kill time before they could start drinking.Revelers sprinted through the fairgrounds at 9 a.m.as soon as the entrances opened, despite security officers’ attempts to keep the procession orderly.
They laughed despite the morning chill — someone could be heard shrieking “why are we running!” — and raced to get in line again, but this time to be first inside the tents.Some 6 million visitors are expected over the festival's 16 days — up to 600,000 each day — and can expect to shell out between 13.60 and 15.30 euros ($15.12 to $17.01) for a 1-liter mug of beer (33 fl oz).This year's prices are roughly 3.87% more than in 2023...