September has ended and October is here! What can you think of other than the famous Oktoberfest when October strikes?! Oktoberfest is undoubtedly the world's largest funfair held annually in Munich, Bavaria, Germany! Generally, it is a 16 day festival starting from the late September until the first weekend of October. There are more than six million people coming from all parts of the world to this event every year. In fact, Oktoberfest is locally known as Wiesn, after the colloquial name of the fairgrounds (Theresienwiese) themselves. The Oktoberfest is an important part of Bavarian culture as it has been held since 1810. The Oktoberfest celebrations has also been held in other cities around the world, which are in similar fashion as the original Munich event.

The Oktoberfest Beer is a registered trademark by the Club of Munich Brewers. With a stringent rule designed by Oktoberfest Beer, only those beers which comform to the Reinheitsgebot and brewed witihin the city limits of Munich can be served at the Munich Oktoberfest. The breweries that are selected to produce Oktoberfest Beer are Augustiner-Bräu, Hacker-Pschorr-Bräu, Löwenbräu, Paulaner, Spatenbräu, and Staatliches Hofbräu-München.

Also, there has been an annual Oktoberfest poster competition sine 1952, where the selection of the official Oktoberfest poster is made by a jury, which chooses amongst few invited candidates. These 11 participants are either coming from art and design schools or have won some awards for their past creations before being qualified to secure a place in the Oktoberfest poster competition. Each of them gets to send in 2 designs and they would receive a royalty of 500€. The jury, who is oblivious to the artists of the designs, will then choose his/her favourite design. While the first runner up was awarded 1250€ this year, the third place obtained 750€ and the winner received 2500€. The winner of the competition also gets the honour of getting to witness his/her design being printed on approximately 10 000 posters and 100 000 brochures which would be published in German, English and Italian. Following the tradition of the competition, the winning design also gets to e n the official collector's mug, a steadily growing series of glass or stone mugs, each showing the official poster design of the respective year.

For more information, visit oktoberfest.de .On that note, I am going to end my post here and I would like to take this opportunity to once again wish everyone Happy Oktoberfest 2014! What do you think about the Oktoberfest event? Feel free to share your opinions in the comments below! Till then, auf wiedersehen! :)