Report on Oktoberfest: Last night
Report on Oktoberfest:
Last night my department went to Oktoberfest at the invitation of one of our consulting companies, ie, it was free! Woohoo! This consulting company bought three or four tables on the edge of the tent. Therefore we didn't have to worry about a place to sit and we were outside most of the craziness.
Oktoberfest is a thing to be experienced. It is set up in Theresienweise (Theresa's field) in the middle of Munich. Two months ago, this was just an big empty gravel-ly field . Now, it has full bierhall buildings, rollercoaster rides, etc. And these are REAL buildings, not just thrown together pressboard buildings. Very elaborately decorated too. The tent/building we were in took 10 weeks to build, and will take 4 weeks to take down (all based on the information from the menu).
We were in Hacker-Zelt (Hacker tent -- Hacker is the name of a brewery). In the middle of the hall was a merry-go-round like contraption that the band played on. Full big brass looking band, all in traditional Bavarian dress. Which is funny, because they played 60-70% English pop-tunes. Country music folk tunes and 80's pop hits are very popular. That and the lastest top 10 hits. The most popular one this year is a song named Ketchup that's on the radio at the moment. It's very interesting to see a Bavarian band play an English 80's tune and see thousands of Germans singing along. What makes it so interesting is that:
- The band gets 20% of the words wrong. They sing what they think the song sounds like. It makes for interesting interpretations ... sorry, no examples come immediately to mind.
- The band sings horribly. Half the time they don't even sound like the song, you just recognize it from the words. And the people DON'T CARE. They dance and sing along anyway.
- The German people only know the chorus....they "la la la" the rest....and sing the chorus' VERY LOUDLY.
- Because I knew all the words to the English songs, and knew the general formats of some of the German songs (from attending a bier festival in my town two months ago), they couldn't believe this was my first Oktoberfest.
Dancing and singing consists of standing on the benches, wiggling your butt, swaying, singing at the tops of your lungs, and taking a drink of your bier at the end of every song. And when you take a drink, you have to "Prost!" (Cheers!) everybody at your table and clang your glass against as many other glasses as possible -
then drink.
However, the
most amazing thing for me was that most of the tents close at 11pm. And they seriously close then. First, last call for drinks is 10:30pm. The band also stops playing then, and they start turning the lights off. Then at 10:55pm, the security guards start pushing you towards the door.
A very fun time, and I'm going back on Saturday. I didn't get a chance to walk around much, and I want to ride some of the rollercoasters. It will probably be much more crowded then. :)
Posted by Jinglelady at September 26, 2002 10:43 AM
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