Munich woke up with a hangover on Wednesday after 18 days of heavy drinking at the annual Oktoberfest,  the world's biggest beer festival, which ended on Tuesday with another impressive set of statistics -- 6.1 million liters of beer were drunk, almost 5 percent more than the previous year when the festival was two days shorter, and 102 oxen were devoured, seven more than in 2005.

The number of visitors rose to 6.5 million, 400,000 more than last year, but the 14 giant beer tents managed to cope, said Munich's mayor Christian Ude. "The festival was busy but didn't collapse under the number of visitors," he said.

On the downside, police reported that the number of dangerous assaults rose by a quarter to 137. Of those, 61 cases were injuries caused by flying beer mugs, heavy one-liter glasses which make dangerous missiles in a crowded tent. There were 10 rapes at or near the Oktoberfest, compared with 11 in 2005, police said.

Security guards seized a total of 220,000 beer glasses from souvenir hunters trying to smuggle them out of the tents.

Among the more curious items deposited at the festival's lost and found office were a set of dentures, a hearing aid, a traditional Bavarian Dirndl dress and a Swiss mountain dog, organizers said. In a sign that the festival's visitors are getting younger, braces were also found.

The most popular song in the tents was a football chant that became a hit during the World Cup.

A popular innovation to aid flirting  was a set of chat-up lines printed on cards that could be conveniently attached to beer glasses. “Demand increased each day. People called us to find out where they could get it,” said Stefan Horvath, managing director of Wiesnflirt, the firm that developed the system.

The company is planning to come up with new chat-up lines for next year and to translate them into Japanese as well.

The translations are warranted given that hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists visit the Oktoberfest each year. Italians were the main foreign contingent, followed by Austrians and Swiss visitors. Thousands of Americans, Brits and Australians also visit the festival each year.