Watched Days

The first Oktoberfest was a horse race, not a beer festival.

12 October 1810, Munich put on a race on a field outside the city walls for the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. The field is still called Theresienwiese. Therese's Meadow. Named for the bride.

The beer came later, in stages: glass mugs in 1892, the big halls around 1900, 7.4 million litres last year.

And the festival with October in its name slid mostly into September, for warmer evenings, so now only its last days fall in the month it's named for.

Everyone knows the tent. Almost nobody checks the date, or the wedding, or whose name is on the ground.

Source: Wikipedia, Oktoberfest, checked 12 October 2026.