Oktoberfest: The German Version

There are certain words that come to mind when you think of Oktoberfest: Gemütlich. Feuchtfröhlich. Prost. There are other words, though, equally German, that you do not think of when you think of Oktoberfest: Effizient. Durchgeplant. Anstrengend.

Somehow, even though everyone knows that Germans love to sing cheesy yet awesome Schlager songs (click the links!) and drink beer for hours on end, and everyone knows that Germans are rigid, efficient beings who lead a society best described as "well-managed," I had never really thought about how those stereotypes conflict.

Or rather, how they mix with one another. Because while Oktoberfest might indeed be a sloppy, happy mess of singing, beer drinking, and Dirndl wearing, it is also an exercise in regulated consumption, of finding the perfect balance of Hendl, Brezn, and Wurst that will allow you to keep drinking for an entire day. It is Germany, in both the ways I expected and the ways that surprised me.

 As soon as I entered my train car in Wien, I knew I was in the right place – sitting near the entrance was an entire basketball team, a group of men in their 20s and 30s wearing their light blue team polos – and yes, their Lederhosen. But even then, I wasn’t prepared for the sight that awaited me in the München train station: Tracht! Everywhere! I could feel my heart begin to speed up. My feelings on the subject of Tracht are well-known, even one person wearing the traditional costume is enough to throw me into a tizzy. So this was like Christmas and Easter all rolled into one.

I walked to the end of the platform, where I spotted my friends Max, who lives in Munich and was a visiting student at Harvard last year, and Roger, another visiting student friend from last year who lives in Switzerland and had come up for the weekend as well. Both in Lederhosen, standing in the middle of the platform with their hands on their hips like they owned the place. And with a beer in hand for me!

I quickly changed into my own Tracht before going to dinner

Then, after picking up Ramona and Gabriel, two other former visiting students from Switzerland, we went to bed, because we needed to get up at 5:30 am the next day. Yes, that's right. In order to get a table in one of the beer tents on a Saturday, you have to be in line at 6:30 in the morning. 

Just so we're clear, "beer tent" does not mean a tent where you go camping. It's a temporary structure, sure, but very sturdy -- it has to be to accomodate the mad rush of people every morning

And from the inside!

When we arrived at the Wiesn, it was still dark. The area had a sort of forlorn vibe to it -- in addition to the 12 tents, Oktoberfest also has a pretty large amusement park component, and seeing the wooden stands, rides, and other structures with the music and lights turned off, in the twinkling first light of morning, was quite eery. At the same time, however, you could feel the first snippets of tension in anticipation of the day ahead: in the trucks the size of oil riggers driving up to the tents to fill up, in the first bleary-eyed travelers in line in front of the lesser-known Zelte, in the four hundred people in front of the Schützen-Festzelt, the one we were planning to enter.

Packed in like sardines, we waited in line until 9 am, when the tent would open. It even rained on us a bit. "Is this really gonna be worth it?" I asked Roger, standing next to me, as we chowed down on the pretzels and water Max, our fearless leader, had brought along for the group. "You need to eat something in order to sop up all the beer," he explained.

The entrance into the tent was quite orderly, actually, as they were pretty strict with counting off a certain number of people to go into the tent at once. But getting inside is only the first half of the battle -- you next need to find a table. The entire tent is like a madhouse, with thousands of people in Tracht running around trying to find an empty space and jumping on top of tables to help their friends find them once they've secured a table. Luckily, Max is really tall, so it wasn't hard to keep an eye on him as we maneuvered through the festival.

Eventually, though, we found a table. Some of us (Max) started the morning off with a Maß, while others of us first ordered coffee (which did not come in a Maß) -- it was, after all, still 9 am. I myself bought another Brezn, and then dove into my first beer. 

Around 11 am, the band began to play. Schlager music, of the best kind. (Click the links, I'm serious!) My friends were impressed by the number of songs I knew -- which was about five in a six-hour program, but Schlager is really something you need to grow up in the deutschsprachigen Raum to know. (Or get drunk in Austria like it's your job -- every Schlager song I know, I first heard at 3 am in some club, when everyone stops pretending to be cool and international and gets really hopped up on the traditional music.)

From there on, things are kind of fuzzy. There's no real sense of time in the Zelt -- just lots of drinking, singing, and standing on tables, punctuated by trips to the bathroom that last at least 45 minutes. (I had a great system worked out where I always went to the Klo with Max's roommate's girlfriend, whenever she had to go. By the time we got to the front of the line, she was jumping up and down, about to pee her pants, and I was feeling the first tinglings of an urge to empty the tank.) 

By the time we left the tent at 6 pm, I was utterly exhausted. But I couldn't have been happier. This was a weekend that reminded me of all the reasons why I had learned German and moved to Austria in the first place -- an experience that would not have been the same were I not familiar with this culture. And as the number of Maße I had drunk grew, so too did the strength of my Austrian dialect, something I feared I had lost. I even convinced two drunk Germans that I was Austrian! (And blew the mind of Severin, another German visiting student from last year, who had no idea I could speak German, let alone a boarischen Dialekt.)

Most importantly, in a month full of new beginnings and the first, awkward stirrings of friendships, it was wonderful to spend a weekend with people I know and have a history with, people with whom friendship just works, who I can see for the first time in three months, on a new continent, speaking a new language, and everything fits just as well as it did before.