‘It’s a folk fest’
MUNICH – It’s breakfast time at Marienplatz, and the elaborate Glockenspiel figures on the big City Hall clock haven’t yet done their 11 a.m. show, first one of the day.
When the clock strikes the hour, vividly painted Bavarian characters do the famous cooper’s dance — a whole lot of jiggling barrel-makers in lederhosen. Above them there’s an elaborate medieval pageant with banners, trumpeters and royal costumes. Then knights on horses fiercely joust until one knight topples over, his armor lanced with all the force of a video game blast.
When that clock tells the hour, the hour definitely has been told.
The cafe tables around the square glisten with amber tankards of beer at a little past 10 a.m., the coffee-and-pastry hour in most other cities. Munich residents don’t mind a beer any time, and visitors quickly adapt. Beer is an essential part of the atmosphere, as colorful and reliable as that City Hall clock.
According to my Frommer’s guidebook, the people of Munich consume an annual 280 liters of beer per capita (that’s about 75 gallons), while the rest of Germany drinks only an average of 150 liters.
Beer worship culminates with Oktoberfest, which begins this year on Saturday and runs through Oct. 3. It falls mostly in September — despite the name — because organizers long ago scheduled it as close as possible to the first day of autumn, Sept. 21. (Herbstfest — “Autumnfest” — lacks a certain ring.)
The tradition of an annual 16-day party started back in October 1810, when Crown Prince Ludwig and his bride, Princess Theresa, celebrated their nuptials with a big civic fete near the city gates, complete with horse races, shooting contests and general merriment. It was so much fun that citizens chose to repeat it every year.
Oktoberfest now attracts some 6 million partygoers who consume more than 6 million liters of beer while listening to brass bands and bad jokes.
The current site is called Theresienwiese, or “Theresa’s fields,” although most Muncheners shorten it to “Wies’n’.”
I recently visited, expecting a meadow. Instead I found a 104-acre paved flatland already alive with construction workers, dotted with stacks of wood and laced with brand-new sewer pipes. The tents were going up — 14 enormous temporary beer halls that could hold at least 7,000 revelers each, at a cost of 1.5 million euros ($1,815,000 U.S.) to construct, equip and tear down.
Later, concessionaires would add amusement park rides, and some 200 vendors would erect stands for selling snacks and souvenirs.
“Every year it gets more and more crowded,” said Debbie Kraft, a transplanted Clevelander who runs a souvenir shop near the storied Hofbrauhaus beer hall in Munich’s historic district.
“For my husband and I it’s not that much fun in the beer tents. They get really smoky. We like to go at lunchtime and eat outside, like at the beer gardens, which is nice.”
Kraft finds those outdoor tables are excellent places to watch the people go by: “They get drunker and drunker. It’s great fun. We look forward to it every year, and then we’re always so glad when it’s done.
“But we do really good business during Oktoberfest. You can earn as much during those 21/2 weeks of Oktoberfest (as) you can sometimes in three or four months.”
I paid a visit to the Oktoberfest manager, Hans Spindler, whose office is in a converted villa used by Munich special-events organizers. We could see the busy Theresienwiese construction sites from a conference room window.
Vicky Weller of the city tourism department did the translating. An assistant laid out a spread of coffee, cookies and sparkling water (no beer), and Weller and Spindler taught me a few of the ins and outs of Oktoberfesting.
“Just as they do in New Orleans with Mardi Gras, as soon as Oktoberfest is over with, we start the preparations and the planning for the next,” said Spindler, who is managing his 16th Oktoberfest.
First of all, the fest management advertises in the newspapers for applications from would-be participants. Vendors and various contractors, for example, must reapply each year. After the Jan. 31 deadline, Spindler has to sift through from 1,300 to 1,500 applications for 600 to 650 openings.
The most coveted positions are held by the supervisors of the big beer tents, which represent Munich’s six major breweries and their subsidiaries. In some translations, the supervisors are called “landlords.” (Those who believe you can only rent beer probably would find the term appropriate.)
“The landlords come from very big restaurants and food- and beverage-related businesses,” Weller said. “They are very respected in the gastronomic world. The highest level a restaurant person can reach is to be the manager, or the landlord, of a beer tent. It’s said that after Oktoberfest, the landlord has made enough money to build a house.”
During weekdays, 200,000 to 300,000 visitors cluster in the tents, Spindler said. On weekends, the numbers can swell to half a million.
“Then it’s too full and the beer tents have to close,” he said. “Then people who can’t get in are upset. With so many people, there are, of course, people who drink too much and then you have fights and you have the police come, and so on.”
The Red Cross offers 20 beds where the overserved can rest “until they can remember their home address,” Weller said.
An event so old naturally has many ingrained traditions. On opening day, the landlords participate in a small parade, riding with their waiters and waitresses in horse-drawn carriages. The dress code, of course, is haute Alpine/Bavarian: lederhosen, hats with badger bristles in the bands, dirndl frocks, lots of loden and velvet and knee socks all around.
Landlords and their employees cannot start pouring until Mayor Christian Ude pulls up to the Schottenhamel Festhalle — the oldest beer tent — on opening day, enters and opens the first keg. “Ozapft is” (“it’s tapped”) he declares, and the merriment officially begins.
The next day, Sunday, a much more elaborate parade winds through the Munich streets.
“There can be up to 8,000 paraders, 50 or 60 groups: different folklore clubs from different countries, hunting clubs, shooting clubs, carriages, bands,” Spindler said.
A lot of citizens get into the spirit by putting on traditional costumes, which are sold in department stores and specialty shops.
“So the whole city becomes wrapped up with Oktoberfest?” I asked.
“Yes, yes,” Weller answered. “We walk around drunk. We’ve got the beer drinking all the year ‘round, so we’re in great shape.”
Of course, she was indulging in a little Bavarian humor. Weller doesn’t even let the vaunted Munich Pilsener pass her lips.
“The locals don’t go there to get drunk,” she said. “It”s a folk fest. You go to enjoy the music and some food. It’s not meant to be a drinking party.”
Those who keep track of statistics say that 60 percent of Oktoberfest attendees are local, 15 percent from the Munich outskirts and 15 percent from other parts of Germany. The rest come from all over the world, with the majority of those probably from Italy, whose northern border is just a two-hour drive away.
“It’s amazing how popular it is with Italians,” Weller said.
I wondered why the city and the beer companies go to so much trouble and expense to build and tear down temporary structures. Why not permanent beer halls?
“It was always an open area,” Spindler said. “It was a meadow in the olden days. And the people who live around it want to keep it like that. When the festival is over, the beer companies have no use for the tent any more. They aren’t built to withstand the harsh winter weather conditions.
“Also, it’s such a tradition to put up a tent and tear it down afterwards,” he added.
It’s also a tradition — at least for tourists — to drop by the Hofbrauhaus, where a sort of Oktoberfest takes place every night of the year.
There has been a beer hall on the site since 1589, and the current Hofbrauhaus, built in 1897, has persisted through good times and bad. Tables are long and massive, ceilings high, aisles crowded with bustling wait staff and people taking pictures of the oompah band, the hot-pretzel stand, the souvenir shop and each other.
I settled in next to Ben Pigeon and Bo Edwards, Texans from Abilene wandering through Europe.
“The last time I was here in Munich, I was 8 years old,” Pigeon yelled above the noise. “This place was the only thing I remembered. I saw all those young people drinking, and I thought, ‘That’s for me!’ “
There were a lot of young people on hand that night. Pigeon and Edwards said they were 19. A few customers looked even younger than 18 — the legal drinking age. A woman came in pushing a baby in a stroller, almost tripping a waitress clutching six one-liter mugs of beer.
A waiter brought me a mixed grill featuring three types of wurst, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. I have never been much of a beer drinker, but the combination tasted just right. I paid 13.60 euros ($16.46 U.S.) for the lot, including 7 euros for the beer. Spindler had assured me that the Oktoberfest landlords charge about the same.
Several times during the evening, a visitor would step inside, aim a digital camera at the room and then leave immediately. They could tell their friends they had been there, done that.
I felt nearly the same. As an immersion in the local culture, it was only a cut above the Hard Rock Cafe across the plaza. Hofbrauhaus can hold about 4,500 customers, but I had the impression that hardly any were true Muncheners.
For that authentic beer-drinking atmosphere, I would have to try a beer garden.
Tradition has it that beer gardens came into existence because bar owners kept their kegs cool in the shade of Munich’s ubiquitous chestnut trees, and, in summer, customers just followed the beer outdoors. I found my way to the city’s most famous beer garden, the nicely shaded Biergarten Chinesischer in the vast public park called Englischer Garten.
A sea of green picnic tables spread out under shade provided not only by trees but the shadow of a tall, pagoda-like building. Food and beer were served cafeteria style with stations for salads, dumplings, schweinebraten (pork loin), various wursts and several types of beer.
The menu wasn’t quite as extensive as the one inside the bright yellow Chinesischer restaurant next door, but I was after simple fare that afternoon: one long, skinny bratwurst (2.60 euros, or $3.15) and a liter mug of beer (6.50 euros, or $7.86). At the cashier station, I offered a 10-euro note, and the woman plunked down my change, a packet of brown mustard and a red plastic disk.
I suppose the disk meant I enjoyed status as a paid-in-full member of the beer garden crowd. Late on a weekday afternoon, we had become a convivial bunch. Office workers crowded around one table; young people in post-wedding finery at another. There were students, of course, lovers, newspaper readers and a few solitary brooders staring into space.
In years past, beer garden patrons could command tables on the pagoda itself, but it’s too delicate for that now. Children played hide-and-seek around its base. Bike riders wheeled past. Joggers came through, working up a thirst.
My bratwurst couldn’t have been better, especially when dipped in a little pool of mustard. Given such cheerful surroundings, the beer tasted fine, too: fresh, almost healthy in a strange sort of way, an unexpected tonic.
Maybe even a cause for celebration.