Oktoberfest, much like Christmas, seems to get earlier each year. The beer-soaked festivities were once a celebration of the Bavarian crown prince, who went onto become King Louis I, marrying Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen (a name that couldn’t sound more Austro-Germanic if it were Matilda Bratwurst Von Trapp).
The 19th century saw the annual celebration slowly turn into an agricultural fair with plentiful seasonal food and drink, falling as it did during harvest. By the late 1980s though, beer became the most enduring legacy of the festival and across the globe, what we now recognise as Oktoberfest flourished.
