MOCKTOBERFEST

The first MockToberFest was in 1935 when little known German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, decided that 12 months wasn’t anywhere near enough months to complete his yearly goals and so he ‘mocked’ one up and sat it in the little available space between September 20th and October 5th. In order to convince the German people that all was business as usual Hitler ordered that all German citizens drink beer by the litre, thus rendering them entirely wasted for the duration of this new month and unaware their Fuhrer had manipulated space and time and whipped up a new month out of fat air. In order to convince the German people that nothing out of the ordinary was occurring and that they were still living out their dreary lives according to a Roman calendar year Hitler started a sporting event, called the MockTober Gruelympics, where lucky participants could compete in events such as smallest moustache growing, which Hitler won every year, and the hugely popular Gypsy toss, where unfortunate Gypsies were hurled by their hooped earrings over the border and into Czechoslovakia, where they were promptly devoured by vampires.

 

MockToberFest proved terribly popular right up to 1945, when the great beer shortage of 1945 dried up amber ale supply lines and the Bavarian people realised that they had aged 10 months more than they should have. They voted Hitler out in the annual free democratic elections and he retired to Jamaica where he lived a happy life on an ample pension.

 


ClockToberFest

 

Way back when, in 1985, a young Bavarian watch maker developed the world’s first clock. His name was Wolfgang Tickletheimen and before his invention people would hang their wrist watches on the walls, which were very difficult to read given their lack of size. Wolfgang, a native of the Munich watch-makers district, dared to dream and developed a system whereby the skills he learnt making watches could be transferred to a bigger device which wasn’t worn on the wrist, as was the fashion of the time, but mounted on a wall. He completed his prototype on the evening of the 20th of September and took it down to the local beer hall, intending to merely enjoy an after work litre of beer and head home. Such was the reaction to his new invention, Wolfgang found himself the recipient of round after round, the jubilant crowd envisaging their wrists timepiece free and their time wall mounted. After 16 days of drinking Wolfgang finally made his way out of the beer hall and down to the patent office, but being a Sunday (the first in October) he was forced to pass his night on the sidewalk drinking Jagermeister with the local prostitutes. Ever since the festival has been celebrated yearly by locals and clock aficionados from all corners of Bavaria, and is definitely the most important party in the known world.

 


 

CrocToberFest

 

The first CrocToberFest was in 1983 to celebrate the wedding of Gustav IV of Bavariastan and Fryhilda the Cheese, the lady in waiting to the Dutch court. In the days leading up to their marriage Gustav was convinced by Fryhilda’s father Cheeseymaximus that the best course of action for the royal wedding would be to wear traditional Dutch clogs. It was in a beer hall on his night-before-the-wedding bucks party that Gustav realised the level of blister received from wooden shoes was far above the acceptable Bavarian level. Not wanting to upset his future wife by not porting her traditional shoes, but equally not wanting to receive crippling blisters, he enlisted his top plasticsmith – Gutentaggenheim the Great – to fashion him a pair of clogs that would both appease his Cheesehead bride and allow him to trip the light fantastic and dance the Bavarian Wahoosey in comfort. And it was on that night, October 3rd 1983, that the Croc was born and CrocToberFest first kicked off.

 

It is now celebrated for sixteen days in September and October, finishing on the first Sunday of the latter month. During the festival a giant croc is fashioned from discarded toothbrushes and on the final day it is filled with delicious Bavarian beers and Gustav and Fryhilda perform a choreographed synchronised swim, each year with a different theme. Last year they performed Greece, but who is to say what they will do this year.

 

 

FrockToberFest

FrockToberFest first hit the Bavarian beer halls in 1765 in celebration of the invention of the dress. Before 1765 Bavarian women were forced to wear either strategically placed beer labels in the summer, or tailored potato sacks in the colder months. But, after much time spent behind a needle and thread, Bavarian beauty Groogletrude Von Thiblestein, fashioned up the first frock the world had ever seen. Despite completing her frock in September she waited until October to unleash her creation on the world, dressing an army of Bavariettes and sending them in a procession through the annual Munich Duck Race, distracting the crowd to such a degree that the front waddlers made it past the marshals and escaped the soup pot – last seen quacking their way down the river Isar.

 

After that fateful day the dress has become something of an underground hit, being seen in all the top Ukrainian and Turkish discothèques. Googletrude started FrockTemberFest the next year, kicking it off on the day she created the dress and winding up on the day the – now defunct – Duck Race took place.