2024-09-25 12:30:14
Beer, pretzels, brass music: Since Saturday, millions of happy people have been celebrating a value at Oktoberfest that has been forgotten elsewhere. Why did the coalition fail in Berlin – and succeed in conservative Bavaria, of all places.
Despite all the complaints about drunken corpses, the destruction of traditional clothes, record prices and tourism, this year Oktoberfest is taking place for the 189th time in a nice government weather to remind us what we are: local people.
After a traditional white sausage and Prosecco breakfast, the beer tent invites friends and family to participate in a traditional celebration of the Oktoberfest. Festival rides improved with hops, majestic horses, marching bands. “Everything depends on God’s blessing,” said the horse-bags in the long harness.
In the old town near Sendlinger Tor, two cars of the delicatessen Michael Käfer set up at 11 am, together with 13 other Oktoberfest patrons – a tradition that has been held since 1925. Continue through Schwanthaler Straße and the Bavariaring to Wirtsbudenstraße on Theresienwiese. Above all, the Mayor of Munich, who will open the Oktoberfest with a tap on Saturday at 12 pm. For 16 days, Sissi’s feeling spread throughout the city.
Before, I sought professional advice from several Munich friends: The only dirndl I have owned since I was 16 was too short for today’s fashion, and nowadays people wear linen rather than white cotton. But my worries are unfounded: Once you set foot on the carriage, Oktoberfest or in the festival tent, you become part of a non-judgmental joint flow that pays for drinking together for a good two weeks. Crowds of people selling on the street: babies, children, parents and grandparents taking photos from balconies and windows. Moving and handling is our job, which we do as much as if we lived when old king Ludwig was still around. You have a drop in the car that you can’t move, but at least you don’t fall. Calm down!
On a balcony on Schwanthaler Strasse, a naked man lets the sun shine on his belly, while a few windows away, a fully veiled woman enjoys the fun. Who sells political elements by wearing traditional clothes. Only a mini-demo surrounded by police could be seen at the edge of the parade. Five protesters carried a box with the inscription: “Dirty meat is also a killer of the climate.”
At 12:30 pm the time of the show: entry into the Oktoberfest. A Paulaner tower with an oversized beer tower rises into the bright blue sky, a drinking lion sits on the Löwenbräu tower, everything here is gigantic, the pretzels are oversized. Light and color everywhere, a hidden image of superlatives. Everywhere you look, there are illustrations from Ali Mitgutsch’s paintings: a couple is kissing, the other is arguing, a girl is surprised, a boy is crying loudly, a stranger is driving across the square in a wheelchair, the photographer affect. happens to make strangers standing next to each other become friends for life. Hardly any festival is as inclusive as Oktoberfest: across generations, gender and gender.
Like the Augustiner cabin for the classic beer house, Käfer Wiesn-Schänke is the institution where FC Bayern and the elegant people of Munich meet. It’s not a cabin, but a nice wooden room that you want to move into right away. 12 shots, one cloud in the sky, it’s O’zapft! After a measurement, you will be happy like a child about the two cloth roses that you won at the shooting range, generous compliments and dinner invitations to the most coveted table.
Journey to the womb
As if time and space had not dissolved in the heterotopia of the throne, Dr. Archibald Master of Time with a rattling train car with virtual reality glasses in psychic fantasy worlds. At the end of a meander through a fly agaric forest bathed in black light, where you have to balance on the rocks to avoid landing in the water. But thanks to the dirndl, that feminine-pragmatic garment that can withstand the wind, the weather and the worst flirts, a mistake in cold water is no problem at all.
The Devil’s Wheel, built in 1910, is also a wonder of the past, the turntable sign advertised with the words: “Young and old, big and small can laugh and be happy here”. Whoever stays on the target the longest and successfully avoids the ball floating in the air that stops the lasso strings wins. The gender question was settled here in Bavaria. First the Lederhosen wearers and then the Dirndl wearers were called out. A guard picked a man in pants back again. Oktoberfest is a venue for senseless fun, a place where diversity and inclusion are achieved in a playful way rather than discussed in a tense way. The food index also stands for variety: apple rings, steamed dumplings, Obazda, dumplings, vegan potato soup, pork knuckle, nothing that is not there.
In advance of the day, the more you ask yourself why the marchers in the Berlin barricade themselves have black bunkers to press down in isolation, indulging in the proud wisdom of elimination with a gesture of indifference, when there are still places like This where you are. A good attitude, friendliness and harmony are appreciated. Everything feels warm here on the Theresienwiese – maybe it’s because of the nostalgia effect, the alcohol or the smell can’t really be said. The process is well known: the campfire as the beginning of the culture, bread and circuses as the outlet, carnivalization as the change of all circumstances. As you fall happily from ride to ride, a trip to the very excited womb today still comes to mind, perhaps the most popular form of treatment at the moment.
At one point I sat down on a grassy area to rest. A man with a shiny Hendl hat wanted a selfie with me. Later I found that I had settled in the “Räusche Hundred Seat” under Bavaria. Whoever ends up there will be better off than those already lying on ambulance stretchers. The first “drunken death” was reported two and a half hours after it hit.
Over half a million visitors showed up on opening Saturday. In times of death of groups, individuality and drift into the digital space, the biggest folk festival in the world is not only well-sustained, but hard to beat in terms of popularity. Here we are all right again.
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