Let the Games Begin
Not that the Prince or Princess would recognize much of the grounds today. Rather than a horse track and seating, the modern wiesn resembles more a low-key Six Flags amusement park, complete with roller coasters and Ferris wheels and rides that fling people around in circles for no apparent reason, all complemented by various games of chance and skill, most quite familiar to anyone who has ever set foot on a midway.
And in fact, despite the enormity of the beer tents and their pre-eminence in virtually every story about Oktoberfest ever written, it is the amusement park side of the show that visually dominates the grounds. Even at night, the park buzzes with scores of extended families joyfully wandering from place to place, indulging the kids in everything from sweet and savory treats to rides evidentially designed to extract said foods from their stomachs.
Not being a person much interested in amusement park rides, however, my attention span for such things was sorely limited. It was high time to hit the beer tents!
As I entered my first tent, the Hacker-Pschorr-fueled Bräurosl, I was, as I often find myself in Germany, longing to get a full Mass into my hands. Not so much for the liquid contained therein―although naturally I was interested in that, too―but for the feel of the thing, the weight and density of the glass and the sense of “Bavarian-ness” it always seems to convey. Like the traditional British pint and the stange of Köln, I have always been of the mind that the Mass is more than almost anything else emblematic of the German south, and somehow don’t feel I have truly arrived until I again experience its familiar, weighty pull on my forearm.
Bräurosl was not to be the point of my symbolic arrival, however, as there appeared to be not a single empty seat among the 6,220 gathered within its confines, and the tenet of “no seat, no service” is as close to gospel as it gets at Oktoberfest. It was apparent that I would have to venture elsewhere for my introductory festbier.
Deciding to be methodical in my meandering, I wandered from the Bräurosl only as far as next door, which conveniently enough put me at the entry of Augustiner-Festhalle, which not only features the beer of one of the last two independent breweries operating in Munich―the other is Hofbräu München―but is also reputed to be the friendliest tent on the grounds.
And sure enough, everyone was quite friendly when they were telling me I couldn’t sit there! Two tents down and still no Mass, still no beer, still no sense of belonging. I was becoming rapidly discouraged, not to mention parched.
Sure enough, though, the third time did prove to be the charm and I found myself a seat in the Ochsenbraterei, also known as the Spatenbräu-Festhalle, having been drawn to its door by the large-as-life papier-mâché ox slowly rotating slowly above the entry. (And yes, the depiction is more than symbolic; the Ochsenbraterei’s main claim to fame is its spit-roasted oxen meat.) I was seated among more visitors than Bavarians, but to trot out another tired cliché, I felt that as very much the beggar, I was in no position to be a chooser. Beer in hand, smile on my face and crazy Japanese doing their best imitations of Bavarians to my right, I felt I had finally arrived.
I was also, by the middle of my second liter, beginning to get tired, and with a good amount of travel already under my belt that day, decided to put my Oktoberfest experience on hold for the time being and catch the next train for Augsburg.
