We woke up early so that we could get to Wiesn (the German word for Oktoberfest) before the crowds. Martha's older sister lent me her dirndl, a traditional German dress that looks a little bit like a jumper, worn over a white blouse with an apron. On the train in to the city I braided Martha's hair in two French braids, a traditional hairstyle to go with the dirndl (how's that for irony?). Then we joined the hoards of people in lederhosen, dirndls and trachten (a variation on a dirndl) heading towards Wiesn and entered the already packed grounds by 9 am. Martha hurried us towards her festzelt of choice. A Festzelt is a translated literally as a “party tent” and they are huge tents, each one sponsored by a different German brewery. Martha's favorite happens to be the most famous tent, Hacker-Pschorr, which boasts that it is the Himmel der Bayern (the heaven of Bavaria). One would have thought that at 9 am we would have still been able to squeeze our way in to a tent, but the tent was already full and therefore entry was closed until people inside left. Cursing our luck, we joined the line that had already formed in front of the entrance. We were close to the front, so I stayed optimistic while Martha grumbled that we would never get in. The security guard told us that the wait would be two or three hours. Despite the long wait, the line never stopped pushing, everyone continuously trying to shove their way towards the front of the line or flirting unabashedly with the guard who was quickly becoming less lenient or nice.
After about an hour of waiting, Martha spotted a tall man within the festzelt confines who was holding a limp bag with lots of paper in it. He looked annoyed to me, but to Martha it was our shot. She jumped out of line and ran to talk to him. When she found me in line again, she explained to me that this man was in charge of a group reservation. If you had a reservation (made a year in advance) you could get a wristband that allowed you to enter and exit the tent as you pleased for an entire day—in other words, they were solid gold. She told me that if the entirety of his group did not show up, we might be able to buy two of those wristbands off of him. I excitedly pulled ten euros out of my purse, my heart racing for the excitement of my first shady entrance to any event (ok, so that's not entirely true, but I'd never bought my way in like this!). But we waited and waited and the man, who was apparently Italian, did not return for an hour. Martha had lost hope once again but then I saw him and pushed her out of line. He scurried past and Martha returned to me, saying he would supposedly return in two minutes but she was not hopeful. I told her that he would come back. She rolled her eyes at me but fifteen minutes later, he meandered back towards us from the festzelt. He looked for Martha, made eye contact and held up two fingers. Martha nodded excitedly and he reached into his bag to tear off two wristbands. Martha ran forward and handed him my ten euros which he proceeded to throw on the ground, then tell her that his table was upstairs. She grabbed the money from the ground, grabbed my arm and we ran around the corner squealing.
“We got them for free!” Martha kept saying as she tugged my hand through the crowds. The day had suddenly become twenty-times brighter as we put the maroon wristbands on and entered the tent (through another door) like VIPs, passing the hoards of people who had been waiting over two hours. Once inside, we pushed through the crowds of already drunk people to find a table. We made smalltalk with a tattooed tow-truck driver who had already drunken four liters of beer in the last three hours. We sat down next to him and his friend. I ordered a Radler, half lemonade and half beer, and Martha ordered a non-alcoholic beer because she had a cross-country race in the next few days. After much slurred German, the tow-truck driver finally got that look on his face that I probably would have gotten after the second liter of beer in the second hour...and he had to race to the bathroom. He did not come back. Over the course of the next four hours, I nursed my Radler and enjoyed the spirit of Oktoberfest. Eventually we were joined by another group of young people who were very nice and we were absorbed into their group. I got to practice my German (finally!) and some of them practiced their English (which got worse throughout the course of the day for obvious reasons).
We stood up on the bench when appropriate for singing and dancing until I decided that I needed a break. Luckily with these wristbands, we were free to leave the tent and wander around in the open air (our new friends had to stay in the tent). So we enjoyed the fresh air and festive atmosphere for an hour or so before returning to the tent (again, cutting all of the lines by simply holding up our arms with the wristbands). We found our friends again and danced and sang. Martha and I each ordered a water after witnessing several fights and various other drunken interactions. I was surprised by the number of American songs that were sang by the band—Sweet Home Alabama, Sweet Caroline, Satisfaction and other classics. Of course, there were plenty of German classics as well, like Martha's favorites: “Cowboy & Indianer” and “Flieger.” After twelve hours of this festivity, we decided that we were tired and headed home.
The next day we woke up for a traditional Bayerische (Bavarian) breakfast in the countryside town of Ayinger. We picked up several of Martha's friends and drove in the right direction...or so we thought. After an hour, we decided to stop following the GPS and Nikko called his mom to figure out where we were. Martha was very keen on getting to the Brauhaus in a timely manner so her driving was a little...umm....oy. Yeah. Anyways, we made it safely to Ayinger after two hours of driving, ran into the Brauhaus and joined a tour group, realized that we had joined a tour group and eventually escaped by running around the Brauhaus, entering again, then making the right turn into the restaurant. Here, we were served the traditional Weißwurst, Weißbier and Bretzeln.
Everything was delicious. Though I thought it was quite early for beer and I don't have a learned palate, the Ayinger Weißbier was by far the best beer I have ever tasted. I'm sure the atmosphere helped, of course. Having traditional Bavarian music played by a live band in the background makes every German food taste better.
We made it home in less than a quarter of the time it took us to get there. After some catching up with Martha, her mother taught me how to make Wienerschnitzel (it's quite easy!) and packed an incredibly gracious dinner for me to take on the train with me. Then, it was a sweet Auf Wiedersehen to Martha's family and München. I boarded the train and unknowingly bid a not-so-sweet farewell to my wallet somewhere along the way.
Here I will take the opportunity to stress the importance of a money belt when traveling! I thank Ms. Rivka Kelly for loaning me hers for my trip because in this case, it saved my passport and credit cards from that thief. I'm lucky that they only got my identification cards, bus pass and five euros. No worries, just a bit of a hassle to get everything back in order though the ACM program was extremely helpful in this case. After a bit of grumbling, I lifted my chin again and moved forward in Florence!
No comments:
Post a Comment