Oktoberfest Lost-and-Found List as Strange as Ever

[xchrom]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,789786,00.html

When the annual Oktoberfest ends and the last Lederhosen-clad drinkers have staggered home, the city of Munich always presents a startling set of statistics for beer, sausage and oxen consumption that reminds the world of the gargantuan scale of this spectacular celebration of Bavarian culture.

This year, the two-week festival, which ended on Monday, attracted some 6.9 million visitors, half a million more than last year, who drank an all-time record of 7.5 million liters of beer, encouraged by the sunny weather that blessed the final week. Celebrity visitors included Argentinian football hero Maradona, dressed not in Lederhosen but in a gray suit and large sunglasses.

But the list of lost items always makes for the most entertaining reading. The baffling array of property left behind each year gives a sense of the raucous partying that goes on in the tents.

This year, the festival's lost property office reported receiving a live, eight-centimeter-long grasshopper, a Viking helmet, two crutches, an electric wheelchair, a rucksack containing two foldable camping chairs, a case full of musical notes, 1,300 items of clothing, 520 wallets, over 1,000 identity cards, 390 mobile phones, 370 pairs of eyeglasses, 90 cameras, 80 items of jewellery and watches and 425 keys.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. Been a few years but my memory of Oktoberfest in Munchen are quite fond

Such that I can recall