From Alonso to Kardashian: What VIPs have to say about the Oktoberfest

Apple strudel, sure - but the Oktoberfest wouldn't be the Oktoberfest without beer, sausages, pretzels - and celebrities. The ladies in particular love to wear stylish dirndl dresses, showing off plenty of cleavage for their fans and countless paparazzi. It-girl Kim Kardashian posted this eloquent comment on Twitter in 2010.

We really can't vouch for the former governor of California - did Arnold Schwarzenegger actually make it to Munich every year? The Austrian-born former professional bodybuilder sure cut a good figure as a young man, however. This 1967 photo on Twitter is proof.

Truth be told, when Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote the above words in his tragic play "Faust" - published in 1808 - there was no Oktoberfest. The first Oktoberfest dates to 1810. But the poet laureate knew exactly what beery, boozy festivities were all about - except for the bit referring to "stinging and biting" pipes. There has been no smoking at the Oktoberfest since 2010.

In the 1947 novel "Doctor Faustus," German writer Thomas Mann put into words what critics of the world's most famous festival lambast: it's a rip-off, all about raking in money. Mann's choice of words is so much more elegant.

A two-week state of emergency in Munich: Oktoberfest visitors change their diets to beer served in massive steins, maybe a pretzel, sausages or pork shank with sauerkraut on the side. It must have turned Erika Mann's stomach - she was aforementioned Thomas Mann's actress daughter - when she penned the above in 1929.

Granted, Spain's Xabi Alonso has won pretty much everything in reach in the soccer world: Euro 2008, Euro 2012, the World Cup 2010, the Champions League several times, German Football Championship and the German Cup with Bayern Munich. But does it get much better than a beer at the Oktoberfest?

In a letter to his friend Aline Bernstein in 1928, US writer Thomas Wolfe described the Oktoberfest. You get the impression that he wasn't too impressed by the binge drinking on Munich's Wiesn.

German writer Eugen Roth (1895 - 1976) enjoyed the Oktoberfest. His comment is widely quoted, for instance in the preface to "Oktoberfest," a who-dunnit by Sobo Swobodnik set at the Oktoberfest, with dead bodies stashed behind crates of whole ready-to-roast chickens at one of the eateries.

The above is what German Greens politician Jürgen Trittin said in an interview in 1997, referring to his belief that the country needs to rethink its approach to soft drugs in the view of legal binge drinking at the Oktoberfest. Though pot is prohibited in Germany, people do smoke marihuana - probably at the Oktoberfest, too.

Former Agriculture Minister Karl-Heinz Funke knew what he was talking about when he made the above remark on opening an agriculture festival in Munich in September 2000. Who knows, maybe he also stopped by the beer-drenched Oktoberfest that opened the very same day with the traditional tapping of the keg: "O'zapft is!"