If you offer free beer to Szeklers at a brewery festival, you better be prepared for a large crowd, some of whom will inevitably be dissatisfied. The owner of Csíki Sör brewery, András Lénárd reacted in a video message to news from the local brewery’s party on Saturday, celebrating its fifth year, that the situation had been quite chaotic. The roads around Csíkszentsimon/Sânsimion and Csíkszereda/Miercurea Ciuc had completely jammed up, and hundreds of people – who couldn’t get into the event – had been left grumbling.
People could join the event for free by showing up in a beer cap with a “won” sign inside. Visitors not only received free beer and free food from the organizers of the Szekler brewery event but could also enjoy several concerts, including one by the most popular veteran Hungarian rock band, Edda – the main attraction of the day. Furthermore, a lottery took place with the following valuable prizes: a hybrid Lexus, a hybrid Toyota Yaris, and an electric bicycle. People arrived from all over Szeklerland and other parts of Transylvania; some even came from Hungary. But all three prizes were won by local Szekler citizens.
“Unfortunately there has been some negative, one-sided news about our event, suggesting that it was not successful. I would like to disprove this. Nearly 40,000 visitors participated at our event, which was a little bit more than what we expected. We made some mistakes; we didn’t think that so many people would show up. But everybody who wanted to enter the festival could enter. We didn’t send anybody home at the door. It is true, however, that people had to wait half an hour or one hour to get in, and there was also a large crowd by the beer taps.” –said Lénárd in the video. He continued:
“Nearly 100,000 jugs of beer – nearly 50,000 liters – and almost seven tons of sausage were consumed.”
According to Lénárt, people did not arrive at the pace they had expected. Large numbers of people arrived at the same time, so the brewery staff would like to apologize to those who did not have the patience to join the queue and wait for their turn. Attendance was so high at the free party that by noon, multi-kilometer traffic jams, the size of which had never been seen before, had formed. Such traffic was not even seen during the papal visit in June.
“I would like to emphasize that we wanted to give something. We would have liked to give something back to the people for what we had received from them.”
–said András Lénárt. At the end of the video, he promised to those who had experienced any inconveniences on Saturday that the doors of the Csíki Sör brewery will always be open to them. And if they preregister through the Csíki Sör website, they can visit the factory for free and be welcomed with free beers too.
Title image: The Csíki Sör beer brewery in Csíkszentsimon on Saturday afternoon. September 28th, 2019. (Photo: Csíki Sör Facebook page)
