Munich’s famous annual Oktoberfest will be held this year from September 16 to October 3, the Day of German Unity. Some six million visitors are expected to attend, five million liters of beer will be served and more than 200,000 pairs of pork sausages will be consumed. Carousels, roller coasters and other funfair attractions will also be set up on the huge festival site on the "Wies’n" (meadows).

But something new is in the air: "Trachten", or traditional regional garments, as worn by the people serving up the beer and food at the actual Oktoberfest site. On select Lufthansa flights between Munich and New York, Washington, Shanghai and Tokyo stewardesses are now wearing Bavarian-style dirndl and stewards are dressed in rustic button-up jackets in place of their usual uniforms.

According to a report in the Munich-based daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the stewardesses did not seem to mind exchanging the blue-and-white checkered dirndl dresses with their scoop-necked white blouses and aprons for their usual dark-blue uniforms, as the dirndls were comfortable and airy.

The basic idea is to spread the spirit of Munich around the world and to provide a personal touch in these times of high-security travel. "It is especially because security measures are always getting increasingly stricter that the human aspect must be pushed further into the foreground," Karl-Ulrich Garnadt, Lufthansa’s Munich head, said before the virgin flight full of flight attendants in "Trachten" took off from Munich for New York earlier this month.

According to the Süddeutsche report, Lufthansa flight attendants were, put in such traditional garb only once before - in 1957.
Republished with permission from "The Week in Germany"