Oktoberfest or "Eins! Zwei! Drei! Schufa!"

The Oktoberfest, my god, what more needs to be said?



First maybe a lil history. "The original "Oktoberfest" occurred in Munich, on October 18, 1810: For the commemoration of their marriage, Crown Prince Ludwig (later King Ludwig I) and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen (namesake of the Theresienwiese festival grounds) organized a great horse race (the marriage took place on October 12; the horse race on October 17 — therefore, there are different dates named as being the first Oktoberfest)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest



Nowadays, people still come in traditional dress that being lederhosen for the duders and dirndl for the ladies, but the fest has changed from its somewhat humble beginnings of horse races into the Mecca for anyone who likes to drink beer (and drink and drink). The fairgrounds are humongous, absolutely titanic.



It is an amusement park, concert hall, county fair, and the craziest party put into a wooden keg and distilled into a delicious mixture of Bavarian culture, international support and good ole fashioned "kick ass" good times.



My personal adventure began at about noon time on Friday. My comrades and I left our hostel in good spirits, for we were in Munich mere minutes from the Oktoberfest. We actually did not know which way the 'Fest was but we all in agreement on how to get there; Follow the

Lederhosen!



We wandered into the one of the first tents (beer gardens is the translation from german) we saw which happened to be the Paulaner tent. After walking around the inside of the massive structure in pure awe as we beheld beer wenches carrying any where from 5 to 13 steins at once or bringing out delectable looking dishes that made the mouth water we found a table to sit in a type of corner about 75 feet from the center and the "ompah" bandstand.



Now if you are sitting down at a table there is no need to order beer. The maids bring them out pretty much automatically. Obviously we were delivered Paulaner b/c each tent drives its name from beer it serves and which in turn is the name of the family who brews that particular batch of golden hops.



The music, the music , the music! The bands play the best old timey german music and everyone in the tent knows the words. Everyone sings, everyone drinks. Repeat. One of the most interesting bits of information however is the songs the people like sing when the band is not playing. "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes is a ubiquitous tent favorite as is Bruce Channel's "Hey! Baby!" (lyrics @ end of post). I do need to qualify this statement a bit. The mob only chants and clap their hands to the beat of the bass lick of "7 Naiton Army", Dun da dun dun dun duunn, and only sing the chorus to "Hey! Baby!" Either way they both bring the tent down!



Let us fastforward to Saturday. We got up at 7 am to a brisk german morning with a cool breeze in our hair and hope in our hearts. We made it to the Haufbrau tent around 8 and we were in the very front of the line, WOOT! It was a good thing we got there so early b/c soon mobs of people were lining up getting ready for a hardy day @ the 'Fest.

Let me set the scene more completely. The "line" is a gross misappropriation of what we standing in, that is, it was more like a mob with no real organization. It was about 15 people wide and spreading out to about a 1000 or so people behind us. A thing strip of plastic caution tape esque was all that was holding the mob back from the actually building itself was about another 20 feet in front of us. You could say we were on the front porch waiting to be let into the beer garden. At around 9ish the tape fell and we rushed forward; a landslide of humans. Now we were standing in front of the doors. Crushed by the people behind us, screamed at in german by the police in front us and we in the middle we just trying to breathe. We got past the bottle neck and found a table with some nice german kids our age.

The germans were nice and spoke english two + in my book. They befriended us, took us under their wing to guide us in the protocols of the 'Fest. First, they offered me and my bros some tobacco snuf. It took a lil peer pressure but our new friends convinced me to take a sniff. Daniel had a small container about the size of a lighter and when he tapped the end a small puff about the size of the end of a pencil eraser came to rest on the back of my hand. It was surprisingly good to the nostril, a type of wasbai. My nose felt thoroughly cleansed, i was breathing freely and my brain felt incredibly awake. Not bad but im never gonna do it again.

Finally the beer came. The germans taught some key phrases like "riddermot" ( i have no idea how the germans actually spell it, more of a phonetic spellin) which means "drink it", "Prost!"~ Cheers~ and "mosk" which is the Bavarian for the beer stein. They explained that when you make a cheers in german you have to look in the other person's eye's or you will be cursed with 7 years of bad sex!


When I asked Daniel why they liked 7 nation army so much as a drinkin beat as it were he replied, " It is easy to sing and we like the beat. You can sing it if you're drunk or sober." Hell i never thought it was going to be that easy. Dan continued. "The music makes Oktoberfest." How true.

I saw what u mean about an hour later. By this time the tent was full, 6,000 give or take, and everyone finally had a beer. On the far side i heard the quite beginning of the 7NA. Slowly, everyone picked up the chant. Steins were raised in reply to the chant and in a moment of awe i saw 6,000 steins one after the other raise like a tidal wave and crash into me at the speed of the slow beat of 7NA. I was drowned in good feeling for me new found friends and we put our arms around each other and began to sing. Grand, grand, such a wonderful feeling.

I got some souvenirs, rode a roller coaster and ate some great german food (which included a 6 inch piece of raw fish on roll with some coslaw) and made some friends. All in all not the worst time ive ever had.

Lyrics, they only sing: Hey, hey hey baby! I want to know if you'll be my girl Hey, hey hey baby! I want to know if you'll be my girl

They dont sing any lyrics for 7NA.