Another Round
Returning the next morning, I found a not surprisingly much less crowded wiesn, in part owing to the earliness of the hour, of course, but also because of the low clouds and steady rain that had settled in over Munich. Lucky for me, though, since low attendance translated into ample opportunity to try the various beers on offer, even if my “tasting samples” arrived in one liter portions at the cost of about 8 euros apiece.
Only six breweries participate in Oktoberfest, the previously mentioned Augustiner and Hofbräu, plus Hacker-Pschorr and Paulaner, both owned by Heineken, and Spaten (including Franziskaner) and Löwenbräu, each owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev. Which for many begs the question of why others in the area, including the excellent Andechs and the brewery owned by Prince Ludwig’s descendent, Kaltenberg, are barred from participation.
While the true answer to that query is anyone’s guess, it is likely that politics and finance are involved in equal parts. Oktoberfest is big business, with millions of liters of beer dispensed and tens of millions of euros spent and recouped, so the pressure on all parties to maintain the status quo must certainly be immense. It may not be fair, but this “closed family” of Oktoberfest seems unlikely to change any time soon, regardless of how much foreign ownership is involved.
As for the beers, they are what might be recognized as märzen in only the broadest of possible senses. Michael Jackson, in his New World Guide to Beer, depicts the traditional Oktoberfest beer as “medium-strong, malty, amber-red, translucent,” only two of which adjectives could reasonably be used to describe what I was drinking. With alcohol contents approaching 6 percent, they were indeed medium-strong, and certainly translucent, but only the most color-blind would call them amber-anything, and while maltiness is certainly more a subjective element, it wasn’t the first descriptive that sprang to mind as I sat supping in the oddly quiet and only moderately busy tent.
Still, not one person I spoke with, local or international, complained at all about the beer, and truth be told, I was not at all disappointed myself. Knowing what a theoretical märzen should taste like is one thing, while drinking Mass after Mass of the stuff while in the full throws of Oktoberfest is quite another, and no matter what evaluations one might put forth after a more cautious sampling, if ever there was a situation in which context makes the beer, this is it.
And so, fortified by half a chicken and some ox meat, I tent-hopped and drank and socialized, ultimately hooking up with a group of Californians even as the rapidly multiplying table reservation signs threatened to squeeze us out the front door. Which is when it finally dawned on me what was missing from my preconception of Oktoberfest the day before. In envisioning the festival as a tourist trap populated by travelers in varying states of intoxication, I had, I realized with a start, gotten it utterly wrong.
Reviewing my experiences, it all seemed so clear. The special occasion lederhosen, the families with strollers touring the midway, the reserved tables marked with the names of eminent corporations, the be-suited businessmen: These were the things that marked Oktoberfest as the folk festival it really is! The reason it had felt on my first night like a Bavarian cultural fair is because that’s exactly what it is and has always been.
Sure enough, back in my Augsburg hotel room the next morning, following a late night train ride with a wide variety of corpses, a quick Google of Oktoberfest statistics revealed that almost three-quarters of visitors each year are Bavarian, with only about 15 percent comprised of international visitors. Oom-pah-pah’ed versions of John Denver tunes and changing beer styles notwithstanding, Oktoberfest is simply a Bavarian bash to which they have generously invited the rest of the world, and we should consider ourselves astoundingly fortunate that they have.
