Oktoberfest - Thirsty Writer

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Hoppiest
THE
PLACE ON EARTH
A taste of Munich’s Oktoberfest BY JOE WIEBE
I CAN HARDLY KEEP MY BALANCE. I’M STANDING ON A BENCH,
(right) Joe Wiebe; (opposite page, dancers and boy) Alamy/All Canada Photos, (tent) George Steinmetz/Corbis, (beer) iStock
bouncing and bucking with a dozen men and women, most
of whom I’ve just met, some of whom speak languages I
don’t know. I take another big swig from the giant Maßkrug
(litre mug) of beer clenched in my hand and look around
once more at the mind-boggling scene.
Our table is just one of hundreds, all jammed with happy,
beer-guzzling dancers – many in lederhosen (Bavarian leather
breeches) or dirndls (colourful, corseted dresses) – filling a
building the size of a hockey arena. There is a large, raised
stage in the centre of the room with a large band on top –
easily 20 musicians along with three singers in Bavarian garb
– playing a medley of pop rock tunes and traditional German
drinking songs. Green cascades of aromatic hop plants hang
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(opposite page, clockwise from top left) Dancers in traditional
Bavarian costume; the Himmel der Bayern (Bavarian Heaven)
Oktoberfest tent; a boy dressed in lederhosen for the festival’s
opening-day parade; (below) writer Joe Wiebe (centre) toasts
with friends Shawn Bouchard (left) and Hughe Rose in the
Schottenhamel tent.
down from the ceiling and the hall’s huge support pillars.
We’re at Munich’s Oktoberfest, in the heart of the action.
I catch the eye of my buddies, Shawn and Hughe, who
are grooving to the beat across from me, and raise my giant
beer mug for a toast. They grin back at me and lift their
glasses in response.
“We made it!” I shout over the din as we clink our
glasses together, beer sloshing on the table. Before they
can respond, the music changes, and suddenly everyone
at the table has lifted their mugs along with ours. With
free arms draped over neighbours’ shoulders, we all start
swaying to the music, singing the lyrics that we’ve learned
through repetition:
“Ein Prosit, ein Prosit
Der Gemütlichkeit.
Ein Prosit, ein Prosit
Der Gemütlichkeit.”
And then the music stops and everyone counts in the
Bavarian dialect: “Oans, zwoa, drei, g’suffa!” We all crash
our Maßkrugs together and drink deeply of the amber
elixir. We made it indeed. !
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(Schottenhamel) Joe Wiebe; (ride) iStock
(left) The Schottenhamel tent, where Munich’s
mayor taps the first keg each Oktobefest;
(right) carnival rides at the festival grounds.
five years ago. Joining the throngs headed for
the Wies’n, we walk through the main gates
to see that the grounds are jammed with
thousands of people, shoulder-to-shoulder in
some places. About half the crowd is wearing
lederhosen or dirndls, which you can buy for
around 200 euros. But we’re saving our cash
for the tents, where beer is a pricey nine
euros per litre (elsewhere in Germany, it’s
usually around 6 euros).
We wander between garishly lit carnival rides, food stands and souvenir booths,
towards the Festhallen. One of the rides is
simply a conveyer belt that pulls people up
a steep slope. Another, a giant spinning
top with swings hanging from it, catches
Shawn’s eye. “I’m going to try that out for
sure,” he says. Since when do 40-year-old
men ride swings? (He does ride it, and
survives. I, on the other hand, avoid all
such craziness.)
I ask Peter, who is wearing jeans and a
T-shirt, why he isn’t wearing lederhosen. He
scoffs and says, “I am not Bavarian.” Though
he lives in Munich, he grew up close to
Hamburg, in the north.
Each of the Festhallen has its own character, epitomized by its decorative style.
The cartoonish, swirly red-and-yellow
Hippodrom, topped with statues of rearing
horses, is trendy among younger singles,
while the more traditional Löwenbräu
Festhalle features classical murals and a
mechanical statue of a lion that actually
roars and drinks from a mug of beer.
Hacker-Festzelt is nicknamed “Himmel der
Bayern” (Bavarian Heaven) because of its
ceiling painted with clouds and stars.
We discover that the tents, as big as they
are, fill up quickly in the evenings. (Plus,
tables can be reserved several months in
advance.) After trying in vain to talk or
bribe our way in, Peter suggests we instead
go to the nearby Paulaner Bräuhaus for dinner and come back later. The place is only a
10-minute walk away and turns out to be
a brewpub with a beer garden, where
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Hofbräu’s Märzen, which is similar to
Paulaner’s, though slightly lighter in
colour and body. The young men at our
table speak as little English as we do Spanish, but there’s plenty of beer to toast each
other with, and we all learn the German
drinking songs quickly enough, so we get
along just fine. We stay until closing,
quaffing beer, singing and soaking up
the ambiance.
Imagebroker/Alamy/All Canada Photos
WE SPEND THE WEEKEND EXPLORING MUNICH
(Hofbräu’s logo, dating back to its origins as
Bavaria’s royal court brewery) outlined in
neon looms above the hall’s white-painted
facade. Inside, it’s a cacophony of music,
singing and shouting. Tables stretch as far
as the eye can see, under huge baskets of
hop plants hanging from the green-andwhite ceiling. At first, we can’t find an
empty spot, which is a problem, because
you can’t buy beer anywhere but at a table.
But then a black-aproned server, balancing
several Maßkrugs full of beer, recognizes
our plight and seizes Shawn’s arm, pulling
him along with her to a table in her section.
The people seated there squeeze over to
give us room. She promises to return with
more beer, and before long, we are swigging
our first official beers at Oktoberfest –
by day – the beer gardens (of course), but
also the many churches and postwar architectural gems – and visiting the festival
grounds at night. On Sunday, we even manage to take in a soccer game at Allianz Arena,
which was built for the 2006 World Cup.
On Monday, which is Germany’s Day
of National Unity, a holiday, and Shawn’s
birthday, we head to the Oktoberfest
grounds around lunchtime. We’ll stay a
while, we figure, then leave to explore
Munich some more before returning to
the fest in the evening. We pick the
Schottenhamel tent, the festival’s largest,
where the mayor of Munich taps the first
keg at noon on the opening day of the
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festival each year. (It’s only after he calls out
“O’zapft is!” [“It’s tapped!”] that the other
tents can begin to serve beer.)
Unlike our first evening, when the tents
were plagued by long line-ups, today the
doors are wide open and we walk right in.
The tent is more than half full, but the vibe
is calmer than at night. Families with young
children are seated at many of the tables
around us. They order food and beer (soft
drinks for the kids), stay for an hour or so,
and then leave.
We end up at a table with a 40-something
couple from California who are more than
happy to toast Shawn’s 40th and sing
“Happy Birthday.” They’ve been travelling
around Germany, too, so we swap stories.
Two young sisters on a backpacking trip
around Europe, also American, are delivered to our table by the server, so we order a
second Spaten Märzen (it’s hard to distinguish the breweries’ different versions of
Märzen at this point, but it doesn’t matter,
because they all taste great).
Pretty soon, it’s time for a third round.
Some young German guys join our table,
probably attracted by the American sisters,
and when the California couple leaves I realize we’ve been here the whole afternoon.
More people join us. Language barriers
are no problem – it’s too loud to hold a conversation now anyway. We just smile and
toast each other and sing. The tent fills up.
The front doors are closed now and the
crowds outside are barred from entry until
some of us lucky insiders deign to leave. The
families with children are long gone, and
we’re surrounded by 20- and 30-somethings.
It’s our last night at Oktoberfest, and it’s
Shawn’s birthday, so we admit to ourselves
that we aren’t going anywhere. And as the
band breaks into “Ein Prosit” for the umpteenth time, we laugh, raise our glasses and
sing the words one more time.
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