Oktoberfest
August 31st 2008 08:19
Oktoberfest, the beer drinker’s pilgrimage to Mecca; a vague and mythical monolith like the first visit to Disneyland for a child. I remember my one trip to Anaheim as this whirlwind of anxious darting from place to place, gulping up the sensory orgy and running around like a madman before the day descended into long queues, tantrums, excessive consumption of sugery beverage, and of course, after that Space Mountain piece de resistance, a spew.
And this was my Oktoberfest too.
To orientate you - it's in Munich, a five minute stumble to the west of the central Marienplatz. Around the massive Theresienwiese Park are 10 or so tents representing each of the Bavaria breweries…and Fosters…presided over benevolently by the massive sculpture of Bavaria crowning herself. Tents is a rather misleading: they house between 6 and 8 thousand inside and have room for another 2 to 3 outside. They are more like mid-sized towns serviced by Frau hauling mass (the 1 litre mugs, standard size for Bavarians). They can carry up to 10 at a time without breaking a sweat. Around the outside of these covered towns are various fair ground activities, eateries selling a range of Bavarian fare, and the usual overpriced souvenir beer mugs. Don’t waste your money on one of these, just stick one of the huge mugs up your jersey like everyone else does. This year so many were ‘borrowed’ the organisers had to rush 195,000 extra mugs from Austria. I intend to return mine: at present I am just holding it as a lien until my liver has fully regenerated itself.
The conventional wisdom of Oktoberfest is that to enjoy yourself you must be drunk; to be drunk you must be in a beer hall; to be in a beer hall you must be at the front door of a beer tent at 8.30 in the morning. Go in your pyjamas if you must, none of the ledehosened locals will notice, just make sure you follow this rule because sober, the beer festival is 900,000 drunken idiots vomiting or urinating on your shoes while you wait two to five hours in the rain constantly battling the pushing and shoving of the thirsty queuers. Best you take your clear head to the fringes and experience the rides with the other 100,000, mainly parents with their children, on the rollercoasters and Ferris wheels.
Even with the global acquaintance of their annual bender, Oktoberfest remains very much a Bavarian dominated festival, at least inside the tents where Schlager bands sing away the hours and revellers, the majority of whom are middle aged locals ledehosened to the nines, join in whether they know the tune or not because every second line of lyrics is ‘eine, zwei, drei, zuffa!’
On the second to last day of the festival I was let in on a privileged secret from a veteran fester, an old man from Augsburg whom I had approached to learn more about the mysteries of their ridiculous lederhosen. There was an alternative to the golden rule of Oktoberfest, all was not lost if you were not in line at 8.30 am. The name of this exception was Hofbrauhaus in the old city, serving up the lagers since 1589, in that time earning the dubious distinction of hosting the first speech of an angry young political activist called Adolf. Hofbrauhaus is easy enough to get to if you take a u-bahn subway train just past the central platz. The u-bahn is quick and basically free: during the Oktoberfest the authorities have given up checking tickets.
It's worth, like Disneyland, to stand back and compare myth to reality: what can one expect? Expect to pay 6-7 Euro for a mass. Ask for anything smaller and you will be driven to the outskirts of town and dumped; expect to make a lot of friends even though you have no idea what they’re saying, just smile and sing ‘eine, zwie, drei, suffa’, clink glasses, yell, ‘prost’, the universal dialect of the beer festival, and I dare say they’ll donate you a kidney should you need it; expect to lose a third of your mass clinking glasses; expect seven thousand renditions of ‘hey baby, oo, ahh, I wanna know, will ya be my girl,’ from the Italians; expect to do a lot of waiting for beer - the only way to order is to wait for a frau to come to your table; expect to be homeless unless you book accommodation for next year before November.
If you are caught out, I suggest staying at Munchen Flugenhof, a lovely little spot just out of the city on the ‘free’ train. The toilet, shower, and restaurant facilities are superb, there’s no need to book, the security is tight – men walk around with automatic rifles – and it is free. The only downfall is that the beds are chairs stacked end on end and during the day it masquerades as the Munich Airport.
The paradox of the Oktoberfest is that the atmosphere is so intoxicating, large scale beer consumption is not actually required once you’re part of it. At all costs, make sure you’re part of it: get inside those beer tents or rush to town and line up at Hofbrauhaus. Otherwise you will find yourself trying to reconcile your preconceived mythical event with the reality of hours and hours of waiting where you have to sift through your memory for the little nuggets of time when you actually did something. Then you may as well have just gone to Disneyland.
And this was my Oktoberfest too.
To orientate you - it's in Munich, a five minute stumble to the west of the central Marienplatz. Around the massive Theresienwiese Park are 10 or so tents representing each of the Bavaria breweries…and Fosters…presided over benevolently by the massive sculpture of Bavaria crowning herself. Tents is a rather misleading: they house between 6 and 8 thousand inside and have room for another 2 to 3 outside. They are more like mid-sized towns serviced by Frau hauling mass (the 1 litre mugs, standard size for Bavarians). They can carry up to 10 at a time without breaking a sweat. Around the outside of these covered towns are various fair ground activities, eateries selling a range of Bavarian fare, and the usual overpriced souvenir beer mugs. Don’t waste your money on one of these, just stick one of the huge mugs up your jersey like everyone else does. This year so many were ‘borrowed’ the organisers had to rush 195,000 extra mugs from Austria. I intend to return mine: at present I am just holding it as a lien until my liver has fully regenerated itself.
The conventional wisdom of Oktoberfest is that to enjoy yourself you must be drunk; to be drunk you must be in a beer hall; to be in a beer hall you must be at the front door of a beer tent at 8.30 in the morning. Go in your pyjamas if you must, none of the ledehosened locals will notice, just make sure you follow this rule because sober, the beer festival is 900,000 drunken idiots vomiting or urinating on your shoes while you wait two to five hours in the rain constantly battling the pushing and shoving of the thirsty queuers. Best you take your clear head to the fringes and experience the rides with the other 100,000, mainly parents with their children, on the rollercoasters and Ferris wheels.
Even with the global acquaintance of their annual bender, Oktoberfest remains very much a Bavarian dominated festival, at least inside the tents where Schlager bands sing away the hours and revellers, the majority of whom are middle aged locals ledehosened to the nines, join in whether they know the tune or not because every second line of lyrics is ‘eine, zwei, drei, zuffa!’
Oktoberfest
On the second to last day of the festival I was let in on a privileged secret from a veteran fester, an old man from Augsburg whom I had approached to learn more about the mysteries of their ridiculous lederhosen. There was an alternative to the golden rule of Oktoberfest, all was not lost if you were not in line at 8.30 am. The name of this exception was Hofbrauhaus in the old city, serving up the lagers since 1589, in that time earning the dubious distinction of hosting the first speech of an angry young political activist called Adolf. Hofbrauhaus is easy enough to get to if you take a u-bahn subway train just past the central platz. The u-bahn is quick and basically free: during the Oktoberfest the authorities have given up checking tickets.
It's worth, like Disneyland, to stand back and compare myth to reality: what can one expect? Expect to pay 6-7 Euro for a mass. Ask for anything smaller and you will be driven to the outskirts of town and dumped; expect to make a lot of friends even though you have no idea what they’re saying, just smile and sing ‘eine, zwie, drei, suffa’, clink glasses, yell, ‘prost’, the universal dialect of the beer festival, and I dare say they’ll donate you a kidney should you need it; expect to lose a third of your mass clinking glasses; expect seven thousand renditions of ‘hey baby, oo, ahh, I wanna know, will ya be my girl,’ from the Italians; expect to do a lot of waiting for beer - the only way to order is to wait for a frau to come to your table; expect to be homeless unless you book accommodation for next year before November.
If you are caught out, I suggest staying at Munchen Flugenhof, a lovely little spot just out of the city on the ‘free’ train. The toilet, shower, and restaurant facilities are superb, there’s no need to book, the security is tight – men walk around with automatic rifles – and it is free. The only downfall is that the beds are chairs stacked end on end and during the day it masquerades as the Munich Airport.
The paradox of the Oktoberfest is that the atmosphere is so intoxicating, large scale beer consumption is not actually required once you’re part of it. At all costs, make sure you’re part of it: get inside those beer tents or rush to town and line up at Hofbrauhaus. Otherwise you will find yourself trying to reconcile your preconceived mythical event with the reality of hours and hours of waiting where you have to sift through your memory for the little nuggets of time when you actually did something. Then you may as well have just gone to Disneyland.
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