New Orleans has Mardi Gras. Tufts has Spring Fling. But in Munich, celebration begins and ends with one beautiful name: Oktoberfest.
There are too many things you must do or see before you die. One book "narrows" it down to a thousand. However, I can assuredly say that Oktoberfest makes, if not tops, my rather short list. Even if you don't like beer or partying, if you like meeting people and experiencing something you will never see anywhere else, you must go.
So what is this mythical event like, anyway? A large field with tents pitched up and happy Bavarians clopping around in dirndls and lederhosen? Not quite. You got the attire right (even the punk guys will wear punked out lederhosen), but for the actual setting, let's just say this: I don't believe in sensory overload. Except for during Oktoberfest.
Imagine an enormous, sprawling area of paved concrete. Multiply that by twenty. Throw in hundreds, if not thousands, of carnival rides, food stalls, souvenir stands and a little over a dozen beer tents. And by "tents" I mean enormous palaces that take about two months to put up and can house between 5,000 and 10,000 people from every country, standing on benches, waving liter-steins of beer.
Munich was my first trip outside of London, and I definitely made the right choice. After finding my hotel (if you want a cheap hostel, book about a year in advance - seriously) and my friend whom I was meeting, we soon headed off to the grounds. We were in a country where neither of us spoke the language, about to enter the world's biggest frat party (just with better beer and less sketchiness).
Within an hour we were in a tent, clasping two steins, in an extended conversation with a local man. Without fail, the second a German realized we were Americans, they immediately warmed up to us. We met a guy around our age that was in the German Air Force and had a real thing against the Swiss, which only got further incensed when a group of Swiss sat next to us. There was also a group of mid-twenties women who all seemed to know mid- '80s and early- '90s American pop music better than we did.
Of course, some other encounters were even more random. Saturday morning found us outside the Hippodrome in front of three very sloshed girls (probably about 16) who continuously shouted "SNICHKT, SNACHKT, SNUCHKT!" for a half hour. Turned out they were playing German "rock, paper, scissors." What for, and why for a half hour, I don't think they could explain.
There were the Munich police who scared the crap out of my friend and I as they, in a "routine, random search," screamed at us for five minutes, asking us if we had our passports (nope, not on us), were drunk (we had not even reached Oktoberfest yet) and if we had a problem with the Munich police (really, whose going to say "yes" to that?).
And then there are the other things you can't plan. Like falling asleep on the steps under the statue of Bavaria. Or going on rides you probably shouldn't go on after a few steins. Or dancing the "Time Warp" on benches with thousands of Germans.
I definitely have a lot of stories and memories from my travels, but I have a hard time seeing any of them topping Oktoberfest. And I'm sure I'm not alone.
Devin Toohey is a junior majoring in classics. He can be reached at Devin.Toohey@tufts.edu.
