Oktoberfest 2008
Postcards from Germany: Oktoberfest
By Ashley Moore
For Guymon Daily Herald
October 11, 2008
Fourteen big beer tents. Six million visitors per year. One liter mugs of beer. And of course, table dancing to traditional German music. All of the revelry that you would expect to find in a visit to Germany's Oktoberfest is there…and more.
This rambuctiousness isn't exactly a new thing. The first celebration was held for a week in October 1810 to commemorate the wedding of Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig I. The tradition stuck, but the weather in October wasn't the best, so the festival was moved up a few weeks into September when nights were warmer and festival-goers could enjoy the outdoors more.
For my friends and me, the party had already started before we even arrived in Munich, where Oktoberfest is held every year. The trains running into town were standing room only -- delayed of course -- and full of party-goers decked out in traditional German clothing, called Dirndl and Lederhosen. Once we arrived at the festival grounds, the sheer number of people was overwhelming. Hoards of costumed beer seekers were crammed into streets lined with carnival rides, food stands and Oktoberfest merchandise.
Traditionally, the big breweries set up individual beer tents for the festival, each of which can hold up to 10,000 people. That's almost the entire population of Guymon – in one tent! It's important to have reservations or arrive at the tents early since no seat means no beer. My friends and I were lucky enough to know one of the servers in the Löwenbräu tent, which is one of the biggest and rowdiest at the festival. The one-liter beers are called Mass, a highly appropriate word for that amount of alcohol, and they were on offer with the likes of gigantic soft pretzels, massive hats, and mammoth plates of traditional Bavarian food. Everything seemed to be oversized.
The band was key to keeping the party going, even though they seemed to take breaks after every third song to drink a beer or take shots. They played everything from traditional German music to the White Stripes, a popular rock band whose song "Seven Nation Army" has been adopted by Germans as a soccer anthem. The music got everyone on their feet and up on the tables by late afternoon. The two middle-aged couples we sat with were actually the first to pull us up out of our seats! And the Italians sitting behind us – they arrive at Oktoberfest en masse like SEC fans at a road game – weren't shy about yanking us into the aisles to dance. There were people from every country imaginable in attendance, but there were no language or cultural barriers. No one had any shame about talking, dancing or toasting with total strangers. Everyone just joined in the fun so that by the third time the band played a song about Gemütlichkeit, which can be translated as being cozy together, everyone knew all the words, even all of the clueless foreigners like us.
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