Oktoberfest

This guide to Oktoberfest in Munich starts on a Friday night in 1980, when a bomb went off by the main entrance to the fairground during the world's biggest beer festival. It follows who planted it, a young geology student with ties to a banned neo-Nazi militia, and the decades of dispute over whether he acted alone. Reaching back further, it traces the meadow's origin in 1810, a horse race honoring a royal wedding that simply kept being repeated every autumn since. Listen near the main entrance, where a small memorial now stands quietly amid the crowds.