Oktoberfest attendees often wear traditional Bavarian attire, including Lederhosen and dirndls.

The parade offers a peek into Oktoberfests of yesteryear, from the Münchner Kindl, a beautiful Munich native who opens the parade, to the Goaßlschnalzen, a float full of men cracking whips.

With 17 big tents and 21 small ones, each with a unique personality, there’s one to suit every type of Oktoberfest visitor. The oldest, Augustiner Festhalle, has been a part of the festival since 1898 and can hold 8,500 people.

Bauhaus is known for its innovation, but, at the end of the day, it was still an art school. That means parties were regular occurrences and often featured elaborate costumes—Gropius once dressed as the renowned architect Le Corbusier, while Kandinsky was known for pretending to be an antenna.

Blumenau, Brazil, has been home to generations of German immigrants who brought the annual Oktoberfest celebration from Europe. Thousands of revelers parade down what was once known as Wurstrasse, or Sausage Street. There, they’ll find the festival’s ubiquitous mascots, Vovó and Vovô Chopão, or Grandma and Grandpa Big Beer.

Ever since the first roasted chicken stall appeared at Oktoberfest in 1885, this rich, satisfying dish has been a crowd favorite for soaking up all that beer. Some estimates put the number of Wiesenhendl, or Wiesn chickens, served each year at 700,000.

With 6.7 million visitors and 1.8 million gallons of beer consumed, 2024's Oktoberfest was large, but smaller than 2023's, which had 7.2 million visitors, making it the most-attended Oktoberfest ever. It was also not the Oktoberfest that consumed the most beer—that would be 2011, with nearly 8 million liters, or roughly three Olympic swimming pools’ worth.

Wondering how the different Oktoberfest beers stack up? This article dives into the six official beers you’ll find at the festival. Each one has a write-up that includes a bit of history, tasting notes, and thoughts on where and when you might enjoy drinking it.

From codpieces to cotton hose, here's the surprisingly loaded history of men's legs, and why 18th-century Europe couldn't stop staring at them.

The first time, in 1813, Bavaria was fighting off Napoleon’s army, which left little time for celebration. Years were also lost to the Austro-Prussian War, a worldwide cholera outbreak, and both World Wars. Most recently, the 2020 and 2021 Oktoberfests were canceled due to COVID-19.

The event was the country's deadliest domestic terror attack since World War II, killing 13 people and injuring more than 200. The perpetrator was 21-year-old Gundolf Koehler, who hoped to use the attack to usher in a conservative chancellor.

In the 1600s, men wore leaf-covered caps when handling fireworks to protect against sparks. Headgear was also worn by those helping to maintain order when leading medieval fireworks processions, often acting like jesters to entertain viewing audiences.

While it’s hard to trace the origins of many New Year’s traditions, many of the norms for American New Year’s Eve celebrations come from German immigrants, who significantly influenced American culture in the 1800s. Below is an excerpt from an 1863 New York Times article describing a German New Year’s celebration.

The manor was the basic unit of economic and social structures in medieval Europe, where peasants worked the land and served the monastery, all with the feudal lord at the top. This account details a pair of peasants pulled from a real-life manorial account from what is France today.

Sweden's beloved musical group ABBA wore outrageous costumes designed to take advantage of a tax break for work uniforms. The law stated that people could deduct expenses for work clothing, as long as it couldn't be worn for other purposes.

Women playing tennis today wear athletic clothing tailored to the demands of the sport. But when tennis started in the late 1800s, women were expected to play wearing long, Victorian dresses. Using historic photos, this Bustle article explores how tennis was brought to the US, what it looked like at the 1900 Olympics, and how the sport has grown since its inception.

Coachella attendees' flower-forward fashion sense has been widely replicated (and lampooned) since the festival became a mainstay of the cultural calendar. This podcast, featuring a panel of style writers and music reporters, traces the aesthetic back to the 1969 Woodstock festival. In the process, they also look to untangle why festivalgoers fall into certain styles—and what that means for Coachella and its attendees.

Participants must hold out a full stein of beer—weighing at least 3 pounds—for as long as possible without spilling any or bending their arm. Seems simple enough ... at first.

While many traditional histories credit German immigrant George Schneider with founding the Bavarian Brewery in 1852, an investigation from St. Louis Magazine found that it was actually started in 1857 by a fascinating German physician named Dr. Adam Hammer.

The Nazis deplored the Bauhaus style, until they found a way to use it for themselves. This deep dive explores the connection between the Nazis and three Bauhaus-affiliated designers—Franz Ehrlich, who was sent to Buchenwald and forced to design the camp's gates (seen below), Fritz Ertl, who designed the shower rooms at Auschwitz, and Herbert Bayer, who helped design Third Reich propaganda.

The secular Easter—bunnies, eggs, baskets, candy—is almost entirely a German import. The egg-laying hare called Osterhase arrived with Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants in the 1700s; children left out nests for it to fill, which eventually became baskets. The word "Easter" itself may trace to Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, though scholars contest the holiday's pagan origins.

Gengenbach turns its 18th-century town hall into a 24-window Advent calendar attracting up to 220,000 visitors each December. Each night reveals new art, reviving winter tourism in the town.

In the 1940s, these men living in post-war France were angry about the waste and cost of the fabric needed to make its luxury clothing. Today, Dior is owned by luxury conglomerate LVMH.

These cultural events (roughly 300 distinct fairs in the US) stem from the original festival in Los Angeles in 1963. Long viewed as a hippie festival, the fests attract eclectic fans—historians, craftworkers, dramatists and drinkers. Listen to a quick survey of the festival's surprising origins.

Advent is celebrated in distinct ways across countries—Chinese Christians hang colorful lanterns, Mexicans reenact Las Posadas processions, Germans light weekly wreath candles, and Hungarians attend dawn matins—reflecting how local cultures shape the season’s preparation.

The Nazis viewed the Bauhaus internationalist and collectivist philosophy to be communist and considered its modernist aesthetic as an affront to the more classical German identity they wished to project. This article from the Conversation explores the history behind that conflict, which forced the Bauhaus to move several times before ultimately closing.

During World War II, the Nazi regime banned printed Advent calendars because of religious messaging. Officials instead produced state-approved versions featuring swastikas, tanks, and Nazi symbols.

In high school, boys served as waiters during a ceremony where girls would receive awards for gymnastics, lacrosse, and other sporting events. Wanting to fit the role, Nye's father helped him dress like a waiter, and he continued wearing bow ties upon seeing their practicality in the lab.

The Bauhaus style has become so commonplace that you might not have realized its influence on modern furniture, but the German school's impact is profound, from the Wassily and Barcelona chairs to Gropius' industrial style door knob.

After World War I, German filmmakers turned from reality to the surreal, fusing experimental art with the nascent world of film. Some of the movement’s most notable films, like FW Murnau’s “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” and Robert Wiene’s “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” were intent on frightening their audiences.

The rabbit's connection to Easter is well-documented from the 17th century onward, but the deeper origins remain unclear (particularly why a mammal that does not lay eggs became the egg-loving holiday's secular mascot). German immigrants brought the tradition in the 1700s, introducing the mythical egg-laying rabbit known as the "Osterhase," whose nests became the Easter basket.

The image of the skeleton in a feather hat, satirizing women who chased European fashion trends, first appeared in 1912 on broadsides printed by José Guadalupe Posada, a Mexican artist. Today, she is the holiday’s most recognizable symbol.

Many 3D printed garments represent wearable art where technology meets couture. Despite their appearances on runways since Iris van Herpen's pioneering top at Amsterdam Fashion Week in 2010, mainstream adoption has been limited due to high costs and reduced comfort when compared to fabric-based apparel.

Dalí was known to dabble in the world of fashion and formed a bond with the bold Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli. Their collaborations birthed iconic designs like a bureau-drawer suit and a lobster dress.

The Bauhaus style valued objects' functions above all else and, as such, largely did away with the ornate decoration of previous styles such as Victorian, colonial, or Art Deco. Instead, Bauhaus used primary colors, clean lines, and exposed industrial elements to create simple but sleek buildings, products, and typefaces.

In Austrian and Bavarian tradition, Krampus is a horned, demonic figure who punishes naughty children with switches and chains. He is celebrated with parades and costumes around the holiday season.

If you live in Austria or Germany, you've likely heard of the Krampus—a horned, half-goat demon who punishes bad children, sometimes by kidnapping them, sometimes by hitting them with birch switches, and occasionally by bringing them back with him to Hell.

During the late 1800s when Budweiser beers hit the market, darker, all‑malt lagers dominated the US beer market. Budweiser was brewed with a single, consistent yeast strain that gave it a crisp uniform flavor, differentiating it from darker beers.

Many of these, such as German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's 1889 retirement system, emerged decades before America adopted them. This article dives into the modern history of economic security and the key legislation that created Social Security.