Pedro Feiten, a Brazilian, is celebrating Oktoberfest and immigration in Munich this year, raising a glass to the difficult journeys that took his ancestors away from Germany nearly two centuries ago and are bringing others to the country today.
“Our relatives were fleeing war when they left Germany. The people coming here now are like we were then,” said Feiten, heading off in traditional Lederhosen bought especially for the beer-drinking festival, which starts on Saturday.
But not everyone in Munich thinks the city’s twin influx of tourists and refugees is so compatible. Many of the region’s top politicians have been worrying publicly about whether they can cope when the annual Oktoberfest kicks off in a city that has become one of the focal points of Europe’s migration crisis.
Tens of thousands of refugees have flooded into Munich since the start of the month when Angela Merkel effectively declared Germany’s borders open, sometimes more than 10,000 arriving in a single day on trains and buses. Mixing that pace of new arrivals with up to 6 million beer-drinking revellers who usually descend on the Bavarian capital for two weeks of festivities could cause tensions, regional interior minister Joachim Herrmann warned. » | Emma Graham-Harrison in Munich | Friday, September 18, 2015
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