A WAITRESS CARRIES ONE-LITER BEER MUGS AFTER THE OPENING OF THE OKTOBERFEST BEER FESTIVAL IN...

A waitress in her traditional Bavarian dirndl carries a bunch of one-liter beer mugs shortly after this year's Oktoberfest opened in Munich September 20, 2003. Thousands of beer drinkers from around the world, many in traditional Bavarian lederhosen, flocked to Munich on a sunny Saturday for the largest and most famous beer festival on earth, the Oktoberfest. That is the signal for an army of brawny waitresses in traditional dirndl dresses to start heaving litre glasses of specially brewed lager to the thirsty crowds as oompah bands churn out endless jolly drinking songs. By the time the 170th Oktoberfest ends on October 5, some six million visitors are expected to have passed through 14 enormous tents, each capable of holding up to 10,000 people at a time, and to have drunk over 5.5 million litres (1.453 million U.S. gallons) of beer. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay WR/JOH