Germany

Tourism is a disease.

We just noticed that on the homepage of Digg yesterday was an entry of sexy Oktoberfest girls with 252 comments going wow about Bavarian girls showing their cleavage with liters of beer in their hands.

Crass sexual marketing is a standard in the tourism business but the truth is that the Oktoberfest is a vulgar waste of time and there’s barely a Bavarian model in sight. The drunk men staggering around outside the tents are certainly up for some action though and tend to grab any woman in sight, hoping beyond hope for some physical consolation.

Because the truth is that alcohol is ultimately a pretty sad drug. Despite the initial boisterous energy it gives, it’s medically a depressant and at Oktoberfest you can see the full range of human emotions with plenty of depressed faces staring deep into their beers, wondering what happened to their lives.

The beers themselves cost around 9 euros for the big 1 liter jugs which makes Oktoberfest an expensive affair and they’re served in large tents playing Abba and other corny pop. There’s a whiff of German folk tradition in the air with a bit of dressing up and Bavarian music but ultimately it’s an event designed to empty the wallets of gullible tourists.

Like Las Vegas, the sheer spectacle of it might merit a brief visit if you find yourself somewhere near Munich but really you can get drunk and leering in a garish atmosphere just about anywhere in the world every Saturday night. The only difference with Oktoberfest is that you do it in big tents.

So with long-suffering beer girl being groped as they serve increasingly desperate men over-priced beer to crap music blending with the sounds of sirens as tourists are rushed to hospital with alcohol poisoning, the Oktoberfest is about as bad as packaged culture gets.

Still want to go?

Wired released a wiki guide to Oktoberfest

Tom has been traveling non-stop since the age of 18 and co-founded Road Junky in 2004. Follow him @tomglaister

He’s the author of Hand to Mouth to India, an account of hitchhiking from England to India with no money and which will soon be rereleased by Road Junky Books.

Tales of a Road Junky featuring tales of breaking people out of jail in Delhi, selling fake Rolexes in Japan and other adventures in Israel and Brazil will be out later this year.

He also writes fiction for anyone who never really grew up and his latest novel is Bozo and the Storyteller – download the audio book for free or even buy a copy…

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