The opening of the Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest festival is exactly one week away, and organizers say they are expecting more than 700,000 people to take part in the celebration this year.
"The festival has worked very hard to remove ourselves from just the beer drinking festival," said Harry Vogt, Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest president.
Almost 1,800 volunteers help to run one of the largest celebrations of Bavarian culture outside of Germany, which began in 1967 at the Concordia Club in Kitchener.
This year the festival received more than $200,000 in government grants, which organizers say will help them expand festivities, and improve heritage and culture in the community.
“We definitely try to incorporate all the ethnic groups into Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest because it is a civic owned festival, and this means everyone in the community owns this festival,” said Vogt.
“We have over 40 cultural family events that we put on through the nine days of the festival,” said Vogt.
New and returning features for this year’s festivities include:
- Oktoberlicious, a newaddition to the Taste of Oktoberfest Culinary Event Series featuring 15 restaurants in the community. Runs Sept. 27 until Oct. 19.
- Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfeast food truck event. Oct. 11, 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. and October 12, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Uptown Waterloo.
- Oktoberfest 5K run on Oct. 13.
- Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest Thanksgiving parade on Oct. 13.
- A new beer introduced by Rickards named Lederhosen, which will become a permanent beer available in the fall season every year.
- The return of Tante Frieda who will accompany her counterpart Onkel Hans.
- 100th anniversary celebration of Hockey Canada.
Oktoberfest celebrations start Oct. 10 and last until Oct. 18.
