This year, the 176th Oktoberfest will take place in Munich
AUSTRIA
15th International Cheese Olympics, September 26, Galtür. The Cheese Olympics in the alpine village of Galtür will last only one day, but what a day it will be! Guests of the Olympics can sample a variety of local cheeses, wash them down with wine, and learn to appreciate them. All cheeses are divided into five classes: hard (young and old), sliceable (with varying fat content), Alpine Emmental, soft, and sour milk cheese.
The Olympics will open with the blessing of cheeses by the local pastor. In the evening, the award ceremony for the best cheese dairies will take place at the Galtür sports and cultural center, followed by a dance and music party.
A ticket to the Olympics will cost €8 for those arriving before 6:00 PM and only €6 for those arriving after 6:00 PM. //www.kaeseolympiade.at
Literary Festival Rund um die Burg, September 18-19, Vienna. For a full 24 hours, from 4:00 PM on September 18 to 4:00 PM on September 19, contemporary authors, young and old, will read their works in a specially built tent. Towards evening, the so-called crime night will begin, where authors will read detective stories, and after 3:00 AM until morning, the main theme will be erotica. There is a separate program and tent for children. Admission to the festival is free.
Lovers of fresh literature can stay in Vienna until September 21 and drop by the café "Vienna Word Workshops" to taste letter soup. That's what the founders of this literary café-club, Hans Escher and Bernhard Studler, call evenings when an invited author not only reads their work but also treats visitors to a soup of their own making. Writer Julia Rabinovich made borscht there a couple of years ago. //www.wortstaetten.at
Festival "Wine and Art", September 3-5, Linz. 70 Austrian winemakers, 15 artists, and 25,000 guests – that's the usual composition of the annual festival in Linz. The esteemed public will be offered tastings of Austrian wines and the opportunity to evaluate contemporary painting. //www.skistl.at
BELGIUM
Beer Week, September 4-6, Brussels. The beer week in the Belgian capital will feature 44 breweries from different regions of the country. Admission to all events is free, and the organizers promise reasonable beer prices. //www.belgianbeerweekend.be
Festival of the Mad, or Fool's Festival, September 2-6, Liège. In 1974, a group of merrymakers revived the ancient medieval tradition of townspeople shaking up the foundations of society and having a blast for at least a few days a year. This year's theme is "Wave of Madness." The center of Liège will be given over for several days to street performers and clowns, as well as stalls with local delicacies. //www.fetedesfous.free.fr
GREAT BRITAIN
Thames Festival, September 12-13, London. The most attractive event of this year's festival will take place on Southwark Bridge. The bridge will be closed to traffic and given over to locals and visitors. Everyone will have the opportunity to eat freshly prepared dishes made from local ingredients, stomp grapes barefoot in a wine press, dance, exchange seeds, bob for apples in a barrel of water, learn painting from artists, and try a six-meter cake.
Fire show, fireworks, parkour masters with a spectacular program, regatta, craft village, Korean cuisine, "Rivers of the World" exhibition, fire garden, master classes in jive, lindy hop, and swing, combined children's choir – this is far from a complete list of entertainments at the festival. At the finale of the celebration on the evening of September 13, a carnival procession will take place on Victoria Embankment. //www.thamesfestival.org
Music Festival Bestival, September 11-13, Isle of Wight. This time, the festival organizers have declared the "Year of Extravaganza." In addition to music events, the street theater with the comedy group Peepolykus and a fire show organized by The World Famous fire theater are promised to be spectacular.
More than 200 performers will be guests and contestants at the festival, including Massive Attack, Elbow, Klaxons, Lily Allen, Michael Nyman, The Beat, Pretty Things, Kraftwerk, Mika & The Hot Rats, MGMT, Fleet Foxes, Seasick Steve, Bat For Lashes, as well as DJs Diplo, Fabio & Grooverider, Rob da Bank, and others. The only disappointment is that tickets for the main events of the festival are already sold out. //www.bestival.net
GERMANY
Oktoberfest, September 19 – October 4, Munich. This year, the 176th Oktoberfest will take place in Munich. With interruptions only for wars and disasters, for almost 200 years, Munich residents have essentially been celebrating the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Therese von Hildburghausen, which was widely celebrated with horse races and drinking on the very meadows that now bear the princess's name. Ludwig and his bride are no longer well remembered, but the distinctly wedding-like merriment remains.
To accommodate all guests, they annually organize construction of hangars on the Theresienwiese - 14 huge tents for thousands of people and set up many small courtyards for 100-500 people. Those who want to sit comfortably in covered beer halls or a wine hall (there is one too) should reserve a spot in advance, though there will always be room for an unplanned visitor. Traditionally, the beers represented are Paulaner, Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Spaten, Löwenbräu, Hofbräu, Franziskaner, as well as young wines, champagne, roast chicken, beer pretzels, sausages, potato salad, cabbage, fish on a spit, and other Bavarian delicacies. //www.oktoberfest.de
SPAIN
International Film Festival, September 18-26, San Sebastian. The festival traditionally features many programs: Spanish films, Basque films, international sections, retrospectives. The festival's traditional program will be opened by Quentin Tarantino with his 'Inglourious Basterds'. Also featured will be Woody Allen ('Whatever Works'), Ang Lee ('Taking Woodstock'), Jim Jarmusch ('The Limits of Control'), Bahman Ghobadi ('Nobody Knows About Persian Cats', which won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes).
Within the framework of the festival, two retrospectives will take place: one will be dedicated to French cinema of the last decade (40 films selected), the other to Richard Brooks, who is especially famous for his excellent film interpretations of literary works by authors such as Tennessee Williams, Joseph Conrad, Fyodor Dostoevsky, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Truman Capote. //www.sansebastianfestival.com
ITALY
Pizza Festival, September 10-20, Naples. To allow guests of Naples to learn what real Neapolitan pizza is, as well as to try authentic 'quattro stagioni' and 'calzoni', the city authorities together with the organization 'Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana' came up with a special festival. Neapolitans consider their city the birthplace of the famous Italian dish called pizza. After tomatoes were brought to Europe in the 16th century, Neapolitans invented their own recipe for a pie with the new vegetable, which was very popular with everyone, including the crowned heads of the Kingdom of Naples. Now this pie is inscribed as the great-grandfather in the genealogy of modern pizza. //www.pizzanapoletana.org
FRANCE
American Film Festival, September 4-13, Deauville. The festival has been held since 1975 and showcases, in addition to Hollywood productions, American independent cinema. This year, more than 100 films will be presented at three venues (the International Center, Casino's cinema, and Le Morny theaters). The competition program includes Sophie Barthes, Daniel Davila, Lynn Shelton, Lee Daniels, Dagur Kári, and others. In the 'Premieres' section, participants include Marc Webb, Scott Sanders, Raymond De Felitta, Nora Ephron, Jon Gunn, Ang Lee, David Hollander. Among the premieres is Rebecca Miller's (daughter of playwright Arthur Miller, actress, screenwriter, and independent film director) 'The Private Lives of Pippa Lee'. Starring: Robin Wright Penn, Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Julianne Moore, Monica Bellucci.
The festival will be opened by a concert by American opera singer Julia Migenes. A pass for all days of the festival will cost €150, for one day – €30, and for students under 26 and the unemployed – €12.
Icarus Cup. September 17-20, Saint-Hilaire-du-Touvet and Lumbin. The annual festival of all kinds of flights and pilots presents competitions and show programs of the world's best specialists in parachuting, paragliding, gliding, hang gliding, and other types of devices, traditional and otherwise. In addition, the organizers promise costume competitions, a film festival, the 'Icarus Expo' exhibition-fair, street show programs, and a children's corner. The film festival within the Icarus Cup is already being held for the 27th time and attracts up to 20,000 spectators and participants annually. The festival specializes in films about air and flight. //www.coupe-icare.org
CZECH REPUBLIC
11th Mozartiana, September, Villa Bertramka. At Villa Bertramka once lived the Czech composer František Xaver Dušek, who was friends with Mozart since their studies in Vienna. At Bertramka, Mozart visited Dušek and his wife, a renowned performer of his works. Here he wrote two operas – 'Don Giovanni' and 'La clemenza di Tito'. 'Mozartiana' at Bertramka is a cycle of nine concerts, featuring works by both Mozart himself and contemporary young composers. Among the invited performers are the Bennewitz Quartet, Thuri Ensemble, and Alo Trio. //www.bertramka.cz
13th Brass Band Festival, September 25-27, Prague. For over 10 years, small brass bands of up to 25 musicians have been gathering for the festival. The festival is dedicated to composer Jaromír Vejvoda, known for the polka 'Skoda lasky'. Several nations disputed the authorship of this song, and German politician Hans-Dietrich Genscher even bet that it was German. For those interested in popular music of the pre-war and wartime period, the festival organizers have created a whole lecture-program about this song, known in German as 'Rosamunde'. It was sung by the second husband of Margarita Pavlovna from 'Pokrovskie Vorota'.
All orchestras participate in a competition with a special program. The winners will be those who, according to a jury of three people, perform the stated composition best. //www.orfea.cz