Beer and Love in Munich

Having just graduated from College, I still strongly remember how important beer and love are to one another. In a vicious cycle, beer allows for love and the thirst for love brings about the thirst for beer. While I like to think that I realized pong does not constitute a real date before I ended my senior year, there were many a night where I would partake in the partay so that I might be a little more inclined to approach a total stranger, either be funnier or willingly let her grind my junk into a pulp with her rear end in a sweaty dance party, and have the night end in disaster either there or a few hours later the morning after. In a bigger picture, beer was more than social lubricant between the sexes, it served as bonding agent among friends - wether you drank or even if you strongly opposed it, social stratifier (where else is your social position based on how well you hit a one-inch ball into a plastic cup?), and an outlet for the competitive side of once glorious high school athletes who were only big fish in a small pond.

In Bavaria, over the centuries beer has been woven a bit more subtly into the patchwork quilt of daily life. With one notable exception, beer becomes the flavoring of traditions, rather than the tradition itself. For example, most Barvarian villages have a may pole. Instead of dancing around it with ribbons (not sweet), the young men have a free for all king-of-the-mountain competition to see who can reach the top first. He who does is rewarded with beer. Also involving the maypole is the tradition of stealing another villages pole. Should you successfully do so, you can ransom it; you get to party and the village to which it belongs must pick up your tab.

Love is no exception; beer culture in Munich colors this aspect of life as well. Another tradition involving both a pole and beer is a courtship ritual, where a young man gets to show his affections for a young lady. This young man would cut down a tree, carve it into a pole and decorate it with colors and symbols that he thought would indicate he had made it and, in the dead of night, would erect it in the yard of whomever he fancied. The guy would then wait in the bushes until the girl came out and noticed the pole. If she recognized who had put it there (from the markings) and she had similar feelings for the guy, she would come out and dance around it. However, if the feeling was not mutual, she would quietly place a case of beer next to it. For me, it's a win-win for the guy.

As I said in a previous post, Oktoberfest started out as a wedding celebration for the heir to the Bavarian throne. They partied for two weeks and liked doing it so much, they had another party the next year (presumably for the anniversary). By the third year they just said "fuck it, lets make it a beer-drinking festival," so now, for two weeks every year in Munich, everybody just gets drunk.

Of course, Oktoberfest is the exception I mentioned, where it's really all about the beer. The Munich breweries all make special Oktoberfest brews, which come only in one liter mugs and are about twice as strong as normal beer. You can only get beer if you're in a tent; you must be sitting down and the tent you're in determines which beer you're drinking.

Though it's not really about love anymore, it's hard not to notice that raging hormones abound at Oktoberfest. Copious amounts of booze is always a good way to get the libido going and the dresses the women wear are probably the next best thing to a viagra for German men. The name for these dresses is approximately pronounced "durndle." As Frank, a Municher who I met in the tent, says, "every girl looks good in a durndle," which, while great for the present-tense of checking girls out, could be trouble for the morning after, when the durndle is lying on the floor. These wonderful garments have magical effects, beautifully emphasizing the right areas and even come with their own system signaling the girl's availability, God bless 'em. The dresses have a sash that goes around the middle and the placement of the knot on the waist pretty much determines how receptive they will be to one's advances. A knot on the right means "I'm taken," where a knot on the left means "I'm single." Additionally a knot in the back means "widower" and right in the front and center means "virgin." So basically, Oktoberfest is the world's biggest "red light green light party."

I think the best part of Oktoberfest is that the Bavarians don't keep it all to themselves. If you're respectful, fun, and can handle your liquor, they'll invite you to party with them with open arms.
And as I learned, thanks to a durndle-clad lass, even foreigners can enjoy more than the beer at Oktoberfest.