Oktoberfest guests leave behind odd assortment of items
October 14, 2011
Oktoberfest ended on Monday, and after two weeks of heavy drinking many festival-attendees tend to lose some of their personal belongings. Spiegel Online reports that the lost-and-found collection in Munich is filled with some interesting items that reveal just how wild and crazy Oktoberfest can be.
There were more than 6.9 million visitors at this year's event and they drank more than 7.5 million liters of beer. With all that alcohol being consumed, is it any wonder that people dropped their keys, wallets and hats? The lost property office counted 425 sets of keys, 520 wallets, more than 1,000 IDs, 1,300 articles of clothing and that's just the standard stuff.
Also turned into the event officials were a viking helmet - not too rare of a sight at a drinking festival - an electric wheelchair, a live grasshopper and even a set of dentures, the news source reports.
"The year I started," Charles Reinhold, who has been handling Oktoberfest lost-and-found for nearly 20 years, recounted to the publication. "I remember we had five or six sets of false teeth in, and a pensioner walked in and tried them all on. Unfortunately, his weren't among them."
A foreign visitor who may have left something behind can use an international calling card to make calls to Germany to track down their missing items.