Lederhosen and lager by the liter

My experience at Oktoberfest in Munich last weekend started with an afterparty, as any good festival should. It was amazing in the way that only an unplanned evening can be.

My fellow travelers and I had arrived at our Munich hotel earlier that evening famished, and we were pointed to the beer hall down the street for some traditional Bavarian food. From there, we were invited upstairs to “the party” in a drunken gesture of friendship by the group of Swiss fraternity brothers at the table next to us. It was there, among a couple thousand lederhosen-clad people in a room twice the size of Butler 209, that my weekend truly began.

Now, I must first qualify this story with the sad fact that I have so far found nightlife in Paris to be quite the disappointment. At first I thought it was me—an awkward American who does not possess the sophisticated social skills of the European set. When I arrived in Munich, I realized that the French just don’t know how to throw a proper party.

I have been in Paris for a month and have made only a handful of acquaintances. I was in Germany less than 48 hours, and I now have complete faith that there are around a dozen couches that would be offered to me in Europe if I were to ask.

Sure, the bonding was helped along by beer sold (almost exclusively) by the liter. But then again, it’s perfectly legal and mostly acceptable to sit out on Parisian streets drinking an entire bottle of wine. It’s really about the Bavarian attitude.

Imagine that it’s 9 a.m. and you have just woken up after staying at last night’s afterparty disco until 2 or 3 a.m. You hurry down to breakfast (complete with sausage, meatloaf, a yogurt and cereal bar, various pickled products, and, of course, beer, champagne, and Bloody Marys) and eat quickly. You don’t want to find yourself without a seat because of lateness.

By 10, you have made your way down to the Wiesn, which is basically Europe’s biggest carnival. You find half a table in a beer hall next to a group of rowdy, 40-something German men who obviously are a round or two ahead. By 10:30, the drinking begins as liter mugs of beer arrive.

If you are smart, you are drinking Radler, a mix of half beer and half lemonade that is both delicious and designed for the marathon that is drinking from sunup to way past sundown. However, most throw caution to the wind and order their mugs straight.

While beer is consumed in massive quantities over the two-week period that is Oktoberfest, it’s no Keystone Light. On the Weisn grounds, you must be sitting down at a table in one of the giant tents run by Munich’s six largest breweries to be served beer. The beer itself is held up to strict German standards. It is traditionally Märzen beer, can be up to six percent alcohol by volume, and can only be made from four ingredients: barley, hops, malt, and yeast.

Of course, since you can only drink while sitting and the tents are filled to the brim by 10 a.m., once you sit, you are stuck with your crowd for somewhere between six and 12 hours. As the day wears on, the crowd becomes steadily more raucous. By noon, the band has started, and every 10-15 minutes, it is obligatory to stand up on the plank benches, wave your beer mug in the air, and sing one of many rotating German drinking songs.

If you are German, you’ve spent your life training for this, and 12 hours of drinking, smoking, and singing is just a good time. If you are American, chances are you might need a nap around 4 or 5 p.m., because the party is nowhere near over.

All good stories are circular, and my weekend ended right where it had begun. After an entire day of drinking, the only logical place for us to head was to the Löwenbräu beer hall’s gigantic afterparty, where the drinking continued until 5 a.m.

Tags: Arts & Entertainment, Shane Ferro