I opened the front door and was greeted immediately. “Hi, Joerg!”
“No, I… I’m sorry, guys. Joerg is dead.”
“Joerg is dead?”
“Probably. I don’t know any alive people that can sleep through that fucking doorbell going off.”
“Who are you?”
“Oh me? I’m Joerg’s Couchsurfer, Darby.”
“Oh, we’re Joerg’s Couchsurfers too!”
Fuck. Welp, looked like it was back to the original plan: I’d be sleeping on a park bench tonight.
I had no choice but to invite the two in.
“There’s beer in the kitchen, help yourself. It is Oktoberfest, after all.”
“Oh, I think we’ll probably need some breakfast before we start drinking.”
I sensed a hint of Latino in the guy’s accent. The girl remained mute, with sort of a spacey, detached look on her face. She was attractive, with straight, jet-black hair, and a beauty mark over her lip. The guy was a little pudgy, both bearded and bespectacled. They were quite a mismatched couple—assuming they weren’t bro and sis.
“Hey, what’s with this girl? She doesn’t talk?”
“She doesn’t speak English.”
“What does she speak then? Mexican?”
“That’s not a language, and we’re from a little bit more south: we’re from Guatemala.”
Guatemala! I was there just a few months back. Went with my Japanese TV station to cover a volcano explosion; big one that wiped out two villages and ruined something like 2% of the fertile coffee-producing land forever.
I tell them this in their native language (Mexican) and for the first time the girl speaks. And guess what? She’s a journalist too. OMG!
Her name is Monica, and his is Jose. Jose tells me that there’s a group of other Couchsurfers meeting at the McDonald’s at Hackerbrucke train station. In one hour. In one hour?
My two and 1/2 hours of sleep would have to suffice. Besides, I hadn’t come all this way to SLEEP, fuck dat. Flying from LA to Amsterdam, then going by land through four different countries to reach the heart of the Bavarian nation.
Sorry—it was three countries, not four. Luxembourg is not a real country, and that’s coming from somebody who’s been there.
I splash some water on my face before me and my new compañeros are off in search of breakfast. When we arrive at Hackerbrucke station, there’s already an excited buzz in the air, as well as scant overtones of beer and alcoholism. We find this little breakfast spot, a kind of German Dunkin’ Donuts, and I am placated by pretzels and energy drinks.
And then right outside the window of the breakfast spot, a fucking parade just magically appears. People on horses and wagons, dressed as knights and jesters—all sorts of crazy shit. My personal favorites were these guys chasing a little cask on wheels, trying to refill their beers but not able to figure out how to extract liquid from an object in motion.
Up on the windowsills, people were dancing with reckless abandon, and I kept thinking someone was gonna plunge to their death. It was a fitting preview into the mentality that would be perverse later in the day: I might die here, but at least I’m gonna be drunk for it.
Well not far from the parade was a roped-off area where a gallant banner proudly proclaimed “Willkommen a Oktoberfest,” which we all know is German language for “Welcome to Beer Fest: Come inside my tents, come inside them so hard!”
The tents looked to be permanent structures, built with wood and nails, and not actually circus tents with circus animals and clown cars. So that was the first surprise. Every tent had a giant emblem of a beer brand on the roof, indicating the sponsor of that tent.
We didn’t know any of the beers, so it was kind of a crapshoot. “Hey, let’s go in that one. Paulaner Beer.” Little did I know that this was one of the oldest beers in the world, started by monks here in Munich. The tent looked moderately small on the outside.
…So what a surprise when we step inside and BOOM, there’s thousands, maybe 10’s of thousands of people inside, jumping around, swaying merrily, swinging on chandeliers… okay they weren’t swinging on chandeliers, that was a mild exaggeration but you catch my drift. And amongst all of this madness, a single individual captures my eye.
A skinny pencil-like waif of a girl in one of those German traditional skirts is standing atop a table chugging a huge-ass beer. The crowd in her immediate surroundings is very animated in cheering her on. Encouraging her to keep going, to swig more and more.
She gets further and führer into her beer, and now the whole half of that side of the room is cheering. She finishes the last drop, holds the oversized glass triumphantly in the air, and is showered with applause from the entire room. Monica wears a look of concern.
I take initiative and lead the short Latinos through a sea of tall Germans. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but it becomes very apparent that no type of seating apparatus remains vacant. Even the aisles between tables are congested. We make it to the back wall of the tent and have a team meeting.
“Okay, so… seats are out.”
Jose says, “Dude, you walked by this one table and they all turned their head to look at you. I could read the words on one guy’s mouth, and he said”—and then Jose mouths the words what… the… fuck… in slow motion.
“Why would he say that?”
“Dude… are you kidding? Have you not seen what you’re wearing?” Ah, yes—how could I forget! I wore a very special outfit that day.
The way I saw it, anybody could wear a lederhosen–the traditional German outfit that looks like a little elf suit. Most of the foreigners were wearing this. (Suck-ups.)
I was wearing a loud, swishy tracksuit that a douchey ski instructor villain from an 80’s movie montage would wear. Underneath it there was a vastly-oversized The Bill Cosby Show sweater. The colors on each of my double layers were gaudy and revolting.
“Anyways… how do we get a beer here? Is it table service only?” Jose shrugged. That shrug seemed to send an electro-magnetic SOS signal to a German waiter boy, who appeared right before us and screamed “BIER?”
He vanished for a spell and in record time returned with three heavy beer mugs that were the size, and weight, of a small child. (Luckily not the taste.)
Our glasses clink together. “Saluuuuud!” We get to work.
As alcohol does great in lowering inhibitions, naturally people start finding the courage to approach me, to offer their praise about my divine outfit. It’s a very international crowd: Kiwis, people from non-fruity countries. We recruit two eighteen year olds from England, and one of their names is Tintin, I shit you not.
The first liter of beer took northwards of one hour to polish it off. After another team meeting, we decide to branch out and hit another tent.
We are just about to pass through the exit and then suddenly we witness the massive line to get into this tent, which… I’m pretty sure wasn’t there before. Maybe it’s best we have one more here?
For our second goblets of beer, we would need s’more starch to counterbalance the beers (or something). And so we get this hideously oversized pretzel, which was so big that jamming it into every random passerby’s mouths still couldn’t vanquish the thing. It was like a hex on our lives.
Monica, who’s been quiet and reserved until this point, announces, “Estoy borracha!” Oh, great, she was drunk already.
DON’T RUIN THIS FOR ME BITCH!
After a bit more work on our beers, she and Jose split for the bathrooms, while I hang back. I’m not breaking the seal just yet, oh no: I’m holding this pee in for at least another 35 minutes.
I kick a foot up on the wall and glance around the room, really taking it all in. There’s now three separate individuals up and chugging on tables. A smattering of the crowd offers them applause, while the rest are doing that synced-up dramatic clap move they do at soccer games.
A whole, steaming grilled chicken covered in herbs and potatoes zips by on a big silver tray. And it looks like there’s a four-piece band setting up in a gazebo hut thing in the middle of the room.
And for the first time all day, a local approaches me, points at my outfit, and tells me, “DAS IST GUT!”
“Oh, uh… yeah, I’m not German. I don’t understand.”
The guy looks shocked. “Oh, YAAH, thees is cool bro! Your clothing!”
“Thank you!” I say, fighting back a blush.
And thus, with that one guy, the floodgates were open. The normally reserved Germans were now very keen to approach me and offer their adulation on my outfit…
IN GERMAN! They all thought I was a Germ! Guess I really look like it?
Monica and Jose return from the baños and together, we power through the second liter of beer. It’s time for the next great tent.
Of course, now there are lines for all the tents. Not just the tents, but for the amusement rides, the tiny shacks selling roasted nuts, the portable toilets, etc. We walk past a ferris wheel and come across an XL-sized tent with three different points of entry inside. “Guys? This one?” Monica nods drunkenly.
We join one of the three lines and it moves pleasantly fast.
Until it stops, abruptly, with no explanation. The guards stop letting people in with us just ten feet from the door.
I call out, “If you don’t let us in, we are gonna burn this motherfucker down!” And despite winning the crowd over, we are held there, waiting in the same place, for over an hour.
“Fuck this shit.”
It’s time to cut the losses on our precious drinking time. I follow Jose as he steps out of line, when suddenly we spot a guard at one of the other two entrances holding a door open for a small group of girls. We smoothly attach ourselves to the end of their line, and although we look nothing like we belong in this group, we slip in just before the guard closes the door. It’s a brilliant snake move and the two of us celebrate inside.
Wait a sec… the two of us?
Jose and I each pin ourselves to a window and look out at the crowd, searching for La Borracha. It must be apparent that a piece of our group is missing, because a German-accented voice behind me says, “We’re your new friends now.”
My new friends hand me a beer filled a third of the way, and Monica becomes Moni-quién? (That joke works best if you speak Spanish.) There’s five of them, all locals, and they are eager to get to know me and Jose.
The classy veterinarian at the end of table starts flirting with Jose, and one of her guy friends begins relentlessly trying to stop this from happening. I decide to get up and walk around, find some more fans.
After two impromptu photo sessions with girls in the long wooden corridor, I return to the table and everyone is gone—Jose, the veterinarian. The only one left is cock-block guy. He tells me that everyone went inside, and that’s the first time I realize that we weren’t inside the actual tent—we were just in some outer periphery lot with a lot of tables.
To get inside? Reservation only.
There’s a gargantuan human guarding the door to the tent. He opens the door for some reservees and I try the same snake move that got me this far. The guard sends me sailing backwards with a violent shove. I climb back to my feet and get in his face.
“I just walked out through here! I even told you I was going for a smoke. Hello??”
“No speak English.”
Of course, a good strategy when talking with someone who doesn’t speak English is to continue speaking to them in English. In this case it took a mere 45 minutes of annoying the guard and getting shoved repeatedly until he attacked me with his rubber hand stamp. The stamp hit me on the wrist, and although there was only about a third of the full stamp on there, it should’ve been enough to gain access.
I marched over to a different entrance, and after getting physically detained walking in, I was able to convince that guard that this was indeed a stamp on my hand, that the other guard did a bad job of getting it all on me, and that I belonged inside. This second guard grabbed me and pulled me inside like he was kidnapping me into the back of a molo-van.
I was in, at last!
TO BE CONTINUED…
