How quickly this summer’s events have moved on. I was in Greece earlier this week, on the non-migrant shore. It wasn’t so long ago that that country, when it was in conflict with Germany about austerity and bank loans, threatened to send all its refugees on to Berlin, no questions asked. At that time, Angela Merkel’s face was appearing on posters in Athens, daubed with a Hitler moustache.

None of the Greeks are saying bad words about the Germans now – at least they weren’t in my hearing. They don’t dare. Merkel’s humanity has been relieving the Balkan bottleneck, and the Greeks are doing just what they had threatened to do – pointing refugees towards Berlin, no questions asked.

The pressure that the refugee movement has placed on Greece, in times of economic strife, has been difficult, and unfairly onerous, but to give the Greeks credit I haven’t heard much in the way of official complaint. Tourism, however, has inevitably suffered, with Lesbos and Kos losing their traditional international visitor arrivals hand over fist.

So will the same happen in Germany, as it surpasses its stated total this year of 800,000 refugees? What impact will that migration have on tourism? Certainly, Munich station has become something of scrum these past few days. Who knows what will happen when Oktoberfest kicks off, bringing huge numbers of beer-drinkers to those same platforms. The odd heavy drinker may even find himself waking up in a camp!

Whether there will be any other conflict between tourism and refugees remains to be seen; there’s a lot of available space in former eastern Germany where many towns are half empty, but these are not places where tourists yet go. They also tend to be strongholds of the Far Right.

The official line from the embassy is very upbeat: “the refugee story has no impact whatsoever on Germany as a tourist destination. Germany is and remains an open and friendly country that receives all visitors with a smile and a big welcome.”

That ‘big welcome’ is good PR for brand Germany, of course. And it is also a connection with history. One of the stories that doesn’t get told in the English-language history books is the huge migration at the end of World War II, where between 12 and 14 million German-speaking refugees were transported across a much diminished Germany and deposited on regional towns and cities. In most cases local residents were forced to give up rooms in their houses to these unwelcome visitors, and many of the newcomers remained with their hosts, as deeply resented ‘guests’, for years, until Germany’s economic recovery was sufficient to breathe back new vigour into their lives.

The ex director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, described it as “the biggest forced migration in Europe’s history, possibly in all history.” It is still a strong memory in the minds of many Germans, and in the end, the country came out of it very well.

More recently, there was German re-unification, and the massive movement of people that that produced. From which Germany has also emerged very well.

But those were people of the same culture. Absorbing 800,000 plus non-German speakers from a very different culture will be a tough task.

OK, so we’ve had one rather big event this summer, but now it’s time to think about another, and this one happens every year, not every four years, and yet it still manages to attract twice as many visitors as the Olympic Games. Yes, it’s time to bring out the Dirndls and the Lederhosen.

These days there are hundreds of Oktoberfests all around the world (see below), but there’s nothing quite like the real thing (22nd September to 7th October, in Munich). It’s massive. Huge, elaborately decorated marquee-hangars packed to the rafters with ravishingly pretty girls, extremely ugly guys, and everything in-between, surrounded by an enormous funfair.

The beers are mass-ive, too (aficionados will get the joke) and the noise level is such that it is impossible to talk, so you might as well sing. Ein Prosit, ein Prosit, der Gemütlichkeit, etc etc, although just Ein Prosit will do. It comes round often enough. If you tried to have a similar alcohol-fuelled event anywhere in the UK, it would end up as a riot, especially at turfing-out time (surprisingly early, at 10.30 onwards) but here it remains incredibly good-humoured. You start the evening thinking ‘what a strange thing is the human race’, and end it thinking ‘what a wonderful thing is the human race’. There’ll come a stage when a pair of pink bunny ears, preferably flashing, becomes essential. How you get home afterwards is a miracle.

Some essential information: Lufthansa operates to Munich from Heathrow, London City, Birmingham and Manchester, flights from £89 return. Reserving a seat in one of the tents may still be possible, and although reservation is free you will have to purchase vouchers for beers and food. You can get into the tents on the day, but you will probably have to queue. Beer costs around €9-9.50 for a Maß, and is at least 6 percent proof. You can, of course, drink wine, or soft drinks. For an account of the lighter side of the fest, see Barbara’s blog.

Oktoberfests around the world: Meanwhile the mother ship has spawned all kinds of Oktoberfests, some far, some near. In the UK, there’s one in London, of course, and a rather wacky one in Devon.

In Canada, there’s a particularly big one in Kitchener-Waterloo, and unsurprisingly there’s also one at America’s most Bavarian town, Leavenworth. But one of the most unusual must be the massive festival down in Blumenau, Brazil, where salsa and oompah come together in glorious harmony.

I’m German, I don’t like beer nor large gatherings of people, and I’ve just had a great time at the Oktoberfest  in Munich. After years and years of resisting this most German of all festivals I dipped my foot in for the first time in 2008 and have been going ever since.

My visits are slightly different to the very liquid merriment of Australians, New Zealanders, Italians, Brits – and, of course, Germans. The general image of the Wiesn, as the locals call the Oktoberfest, that the world sees is one of lots of people drinking lots of beer and getting very drunk. Bierleichen (beer corpses) on the meadows around the Bavaria statue on the fringes of the Theresienwiese where the Wiesn takes place are a common sight.

However, there’s another side to it. For example, my personal Wiesn memories are full of sunshine, relaxed weekend mornings sitting on beer benches outside in the sun with good food and a nice glass of sparkling wine or white wine spritzer (that’s possible, yes, no one is going to shoot you). This year when I visited last Sunday, there was no sun, but we still had a great day in the Weinzelt (wine tent), dancing on the benches while it was raining cats and dogs outside. Clapping hands and singing (shouting) silly songs is mandatory. Unlike the typical big Wiesn tents such as the Hippodrome or Augustiner, the wine tent serves wine, sparkling wine, champagne and wheat beer only, not the traditional one litre Maß. Not surprisingly, it is very popular with the ladies, maybe also because it’s a bit smaller, less rowdy and very lovingly decorated.

A very important element of the Oktoberfest that tends to be overlooked outside Germany is that it is, traditionally, a fantastic family fun fair with lots of rides, modern and wonderfully nostalgic ones, delicious foods and sweets and – a personal favourite of mine – ‘Bodos Cafézelt’, a tent all dedicated to cakes and coffee. For international visitors – and from my point of view that is a bit unfortunate – it’s more or less all about drinking as much beer as possible. For me, as a German living abroad, it’s every year a wonderful piece of Heimat – even if I’m not Bavarian. It’s about tradition, your roots and where you’re coming from, a bit of originality in our globalised and branded world. It’s about colourful Dirndls and Lederhosen and socialising with friends and strangers. Because, in the end, Wiesn revellers are all part of a big community, and the general mood is one of friendliness and having fun with lots of other people.

My favourite Wiesn moment this year was witnessing a group of Asian tourists who sat down near us in the Weinzelt, observing their surroundings with utter amazement and a look of sheer incredulity. I tried to put myself into their shoes: Thousands of people in quirky dresses, dancing and singing while standing on wooden benches, sometimes making funny gestures with their arms and hands (some songs require expressing the lyrics by making gestures, it’s a German thing, I guess) while a band is playing very loudly on a stage. What must they have been thinking? How weird is this. And how great. Silliness on a large scale – it’s necessary now and then. I’ve already decided to join in another time next year. Just the beer drinking will again have to take place without me.

See the GermanyisWunderbar Facebook page for our Wiesn picture album: www.facebook.com/GermanyisWunderbar