Germany's biggest and best-known beer festival, the Oktoberfest, is currently going on in Munich. Correct me if I am wrong, but this normally starts on the last but one Saturday in September and runs usually until the first Sunday in October, though if there is a public holiday on the Monday (German Reunification Day is October 3rd), that too is included. Correction - a quick countback tells me that in fact if the last Saturday of the month is the 30th, it will start on the 16th, not the 23rd, the duration of the event being 16-17 days.
The major five Munich breweries will have their large tents with beer as may be expected (they are also intelligent enough to provide non-alcoholic drinks, Munich being Munich some people will arrive in cars and drivers are discouraged from drinking and driving), along with Bavarian-biased food (watch your cholesterol level) and the usual entertainment from the oompah bands. Smaller breweries also put in an appearance, and their tents also get crowded.
Well worth the visit, thousands of tourists come annually, and it gets crowded at the weekends which means that it is better to go on a midweek evening.
The event is held in the area called Auf der Wiesn (on the meadow), has a lengthy history that you can read up elsewhere, and is by any stretch a big event. You will already have missed it this year (2013), but the parade on opening days, with dray carts carrying barrels of beer and being pulled by some of the most magnificent horses that you have ever seen, from the centre of Munich and leading to the Wiesn, is well worth seeing.
Alongside but not within the festival grounds themselves is a funfair with the whole range of the typical funfair experience.
One ride that I can personally recommend is what the Germans call the Olympia Looping ("Looping" is one of those strange German borrowings from English that does not seem to have been copied directly). I have always called this the Olympic Rings though this is not the official name. There are five large rings around which a roller-coaster goes very quickly - all the way round the rings.
This is a particularly interesting (!) experience to try when you have come out of a beer tent after drinking two masses (a mass = a 1-litre beer glass) of strong beer. I did this both years upon my visits in 1994 & 1995, once accompanied by friends who wanted to throttle me for taking them on this ride, and once alone. Not incidentally recommended after drinking 3 masses or more (if you are capable of standing up after drinking 4 masses, you are obviously qualified as someone who is alcohol resistant!).
This still is part of the funfair - that I have checked. A YouTube video, borrowed without permission, follows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZNZX9BW5tw
Try it some time and enjoy!
For my female readership, you might also be interested in the traditional Bavarian dress, the dirndl. Not every woman by any means at the Oktoberfest can be seen in a dirndl (some even turn up in lederhosen!), but some do choose to wear one and get themselves noticed. Not every dirndl is all that elegant, but at their best they have definitely an eye-catching quality. There are some interesting pieces on the Internet on how to make your own (my late mother would have been fascinated at the thought).
The word "Dirndl" is also interesting for a linguist. The origin of the word comprises two parts. It was a "Kleid" (dress") for a "Dirne" (think of the old English word "maiden", German plural incidentally adds an "n", so "Dirnen"). Hence Dirnen-Kleid - a maiden's dress. Given a few generations, that got shortened to Dirndl.
And for young foreign men out there who want to impress young Bavarian women with their command of German, do not wharrever start calling them "Dirne(n)" these days!
This once polite word has descended into meaning a slovenly woman with the lowest possible moral standards! It is pejorative to say the least! Go and check "Dirne" on the German-English dictionary on dict.leo.org if you want some modern equivalent English words! Interesting, though, how words change, isn't it?
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