The magic words:
Munich Oktoberfest! I’ve been to
festivals that call themselves Oktoberfest, but none can rival the real
thing. Why?
In Munich, it’s larger, and lasts longer, than anywhere
else. The Oktoberfest grounds are the
“meadow” in the middle of the city, where the first such party was held about
200 years ago by the Crown Prince of Bavaria and his bride so the people of
Munich could celebrate their marriage. It lasts just over two weeks. More than a dozen enormous beer halls are
temporarily built on the more than 100 acres of a former meadow called “Wiesn”, each tent serving
one of Munich’s beers along with traditional Bavarian food, and extravagantly
decorated. Each beer hall, and the
adjacent grounds within its precinct, can hold from 1,000 to as many as 11,000
people. Those in the know can reserve
tables in advance. If you’re not in the
know, you can usually enter one of the big tents or their grounds if you arrive
before 11 am.
On the day we arrived in Munich, we followed the crowds to
the Wiesn, just to see what was there.
The carnival portion, which occupies at least as much land area as the
beer tents, large and small, is the largest such I have ever seen, and I’ve
been to the Sandwich Fair in New Hampshire!
At night the lights of the rides and booths selling food and junk were
dazzling. We quickly learned that many
of the large beer tents get closed completely to new entrants, both indoors and
out. Some tents still allowed people to
enter their outdoor area, and we found seats with a table of nice folks outside
the Ochsenbraterei. Beef was the main
dish, and Spaten was the beer served.
Sitting and watching the crowd go by, we were amazed at the
sheer numbers of people wearing traditional Bavarian folk costumes
(“Trachtl”). I was reminded of the
advice given to me by some nice American young people I’d met earlier in the
week: lederhosen and dirndls are almost
mandatory! This is one of the many
things which distinguish the Munich festival from its imitators: it celebrates the folk heritage of Bavaria. The beer, the music, the food, and the
clothing are all integral parts of this heritage.
At our table that first night, we met half a dozen twenty or
thirty-somethings, all either originally or currently from Munich, who would
never consider missing Oktoberfest. They
kindly spoke English with us, advised us what to eat, and answered all our
probing questions about the event and their country. We stayed long enough to finish a “Mass” (the
one-liter mug of Oktoberfest beer), which when properly sipped can last a
couple of hours. (If you drink it much
faster than that, you’re likelier to become a “beer corpse” because the alcohol
content is higher than that of regular beer.)
When we returned the next day, we’d stopped at one of the
dozens of temporary “Trachtl” shops opened in every niche between downtown
Munich and the Wiesn, and bought a dirndl for me. Instantly, I looked like a native, and not
just because of my Bavarian ancestry! We
consequently arrived at the Wiesn later than we’d intended, and the first few
beer tents we came to were already closed to new entrants. When we came to the tent called “Kafers Wiesn
Schanke”, the guards assured us it was closed, but then turned their backs to
us. A few people strode confidently past
us into the Kafers’ grounds, and we followed.
We stayed there for the next ten hours.
At first, after realizing that even the outdoor tables were
packed full, we stood and perched against railings, just watching the
crowd. After a while we realized that
some waitresses were tasked with serving the people standing where we stood,
and got hold of a Mass of Paulaner Oktoberfestbier each. With that in our hands, we fit right in. Nearby tables of people got used to our
presence, and included us in their toasts.
Just when standing was really getting old, seats became open at an
adjacent table, and we sat down there as fast as we could. As the hours passed,
we found seats in different parts of the Kafers’ outdoor tables, made friends
and talked for a long time, and then moved along, making yet more new friends
in our new location. In fact, everywhere
we went, people were very friendly to us, introduced us to their friends, and
made us feel welcome.
We enjoyed people watching as much as interacting with
them. For one thing, the festive
clothing was endlessly interesting. The
only identical dirndls I saw were worn by employees as a uniform. Otherwise, the range of dirndls was just
amazing. Cottons and brocades, modest
and skimpy, old and new, each one pretty in itself and becoming to its
wearer. Menswear was, while oriented
around lederhosen, also widely varied:
gingham or homespun cotton shirts, different lengths of pants, sweaters
of dark wools, vests of printed velvets, and tailored collarless wool jackets
along with thick knitted knee socks made each guy look a little different. The overall impression was that everyone had
worn their best party clothes to the city’s biggest party. If I hadn’t been in traditional garb myself,
I would have felt out of place, but as it was, I fit right in.
Sure, lots of unpleasant things happen at Oktoberfest,
whether in Munich or not: dead-drunkenness, fights, robberies, health
incidents…of course. Still, millions of
visitors come every year to enjoy the party with no personal experience of the
downsides. Most attendees in Munich are
Germans; the statistics I found, which are over ten years old, are 85% Germans,
15% foreign visitors. Certainly,
Americans love Oktoberfest! But for
Bavarians, it’s the best party of the year, a chance to see and be seen by old
friends and new, and to be glad to be Bavarian.
I sometimes think many Americans long for that sort of social identity,
that sense of belonging to something persistent over time, as well as that
ability to have fun together. I’m pretty
sure we don’t allow ourselves to have real Oktoberfests in the US, possibly
because we don’t trust our social fabric to be strong enough to withstand all
that fun outside our own homes.
Bavarians know, however, that their social fabric is run through with
steel threads. Time and tradition will
do that for you.
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