Odessa festival celebrates beer, brats
This weekend, the population of Odessa, Wash., will swell from about 1,000 to around 15,000.
And many will be happily consuming bratwurst, apple strudel and Rocky Coulee Dunkel beer.
It’s the annual Odessa Deutschesfest weekend, running today, Saturday and Sunday. This is the Inland Northwest’s biggest celebration of German heritage.
Make that, Russian-German heritage. Odessa was largely founded by German-speaking farmers from the Volga and Black Sea regions of Russia (thus the name Odessa).
In 1971, the descendants of those settlers launched a modest heritage festival in Odessa. The organizers were astonished by the response.
Today, the festival attracts between 12,000 and 15,000 visitors every year, according to Don Walter, the editor and publisher of the Odessa Record and a longtime Deutschesfest enthusiast. An entire RV city, 400 vehicles strong, occupies the town’s Finney Field.
The festival includes dozens of events, including a bratwurst-eating contest, kiddie tractor pull, paintball scrimmage, bingo and art show. However, the two main attractions are the Deutschesfest Parade and the downtown Bier Garten.
The parade through downtown Odessa, billed as “a mile long,” begins at 10 a.m. Saturday. It begins with a kiddie parade and concludes with a string of combines and other giant-sized farm implements, symbolizing the importance of wheat farming to the community, said Walter.
The block-long Bier Garten, which has a $3 cover charge, features nearly nonstop music, including multiple sets from Odessa’s own German-style band, the Oom Pa’s and Ma’s. Rock and roll, country, big-band and oldies will be provided by a number of other bands.
The Bier Garten will sell German sausages made by Odessa’s own Voise sausage factory, as well as locally famous pickles. Beer will be flowing, of course, including the Dunkel, a dark beer made by Odessa’s own microbrewer, Rocky Coulee Brewery, and vast quantities of regular beer. A more family-oriented Jugend (Youth) Garden will be nearby.
A number of food booths will also be clustered around what is called the German Food Circus, or Festplatz, downtown. These will be selling a variety of items, many of which have a German theme.
For instance, the women of Heritage Church typically cook up 3,000 stuffed German cabbage rolls to sell at their “food chalet.” St. Joseph’s Catholic Church traditionally makes kraut ranzas, pockets of dough stuffed with beef, cabbage, onions and sauerkraut.
No wonder entire tour buses arrive from the Inland Northwest and Puget Sound for this event.