Very close call

Angie had called her sister Sigi last night and as Angie was leaving work at midday, they agreed to meet up at the Oktoberfest today for a bite to eat and a quick walk around.

As it turned out Sigi felt unwell and called during the morning to cancel the meeting. However Angie had promised to buy a friend a commemorative stein - stone one litre mug - and so she went anyway. It's only a 10 minute walk from her office.

Up until last year, access to the 31 hectare (76 acre) was pretty much possible at any point. In 2016 a temporary 2m fence was erected with selected entrances with security checks and a rucksack / baggage ban. However the Main entrance shown at the top of the Blip is probably the main meeting up point.

Angie went up to the security check with an empty rucksack but was not allowed through even though she only wanted to go the 10m to the first stand with beer mugs for sale. Not wanting to go through the hassle of putting it in a safe deposit box, she spotted an elderly very Bavarian couple who happily agreed to hold the rucksack while she got the mugs.

Very trusting even though they could see it was empty. However it was at this very entrance that 37 years and less than 1 day earlier, she had been standing waiting to meet up with her sister Sigi. They had gone to the Oktoberfest on the night of 26 September 1980 (Angie aged 14) and had spent the evening with their separate group of friends, agreeing to meet at 10:00pm to take the train home together. When Sigi didn't appear on time, Angie simply left and would returned home with her friends. She was less than 200m away at the (now defunct) Hackerkeller just above the site when at 10:19pm a massive bomb went off at the main entrance. They heard the noise but had no idea what is was and simply got out of the way by continuing on foot to the nearby Hackerbrueke train station. There were no mobile phones, Twitter or Facebook in those days to get any information.

The bomb killed 12 innocent pedestrians and the bomb layer. A Brit, a Swiss, 3 German children aged 6, 8 and 10 were amongst those killed. The bomb made from a British 1954 mortar bomb, designed for maximum fragmentation,  caused damage over an area as big as a soccer field (100 x 60m/yds) and injured a further 225 people, 50 of them with life long physical consequences.

The largest terrorist attack in Germany since WWII. Carried out by a member of a right wing neo-nazi small radical student group. To this date it is not clear if he was acting alone.

Sigi was also just 300m or so away at the Hacker Tent when the bomb went off. Her first reaction was that it was the start of a fireworks display. When she couldn't get through to the main entrance did a detour around the east side of the site and then once outside went past the main entrance where the bodies of people and police horses were being covered in sheets and only then realised something dreadful had happened.

Angie arrived home and only then learnt about the bomb and there naturally followed two hours of hell as they had no idea where Sigi was. Eventually she got home safely..

The bottom photo is the memorial where the flowers were laid yesterday. It is directly at the main entrance.

Today Angie spent about 2 minutes on the Oktoberfest site!