What’s special: where the tapping happens
There’s no Wiesn without the Schottenhamel-Festhalle, because this is where Oktoberfest is officially opened every year with a tap. At noon on the first day of Wiesn, the mayor of Munich taps the first barrel of beer with as few strokes as possible. “It’s tapped! To a peaceful Wiesn!” Only then may the other tents start pouring. Why does the tapping taking place at the Schottenhamel? Because it’s where the event was “officially” was tapped for the first time in 1950, by Thomas Wimmer, the mayor at the time. Legend has it that he was in quite a hurry because he had to open a mass at Theresienhöhe shortly before noon, that it was raining buckets, and he simply took the shortest route into a tent: that tent was the Schottenhamel. Whether it really happened that way is hard to say.
