The setting: The Fischer-Vroni tent, our first night at Oktoberfest.
The scene: The tent is in full-on party mode when we walk in. People dressed in lederhosen and dirndls are standing shoulder to shoulder on benches singing German pop songs at the top of their lungs. In a back corner, twenty-somethings are taking hits of what looks a heck of a lot like cocaine but isn’t. (It’s wiesn pulver, a legal mix of powdered menthol and glucose.) We are mesmerized and also a little unsure what to do, so we stand to the side gaping.
A tall blond guy plants himself next to me. “Du solltest da draußen sein!” he yells over the music. “I’m sorry, I don’t know German,” I yell back. “Just go in and join any table. People will let you. This is once in a lifetime!” And then he vanishes into the crowd. Was he our guardian angel? Sent by our Lord to propel us into the beerfest? Maybe so.
The setting: The Café Kaiserschmarrn tent, our first night at Oktoberfest.
The scene: This tent is famous for cocktails and desserts. The line is already out the door, but we’re not here to drink—we’re here for kaiserschmarrn, scrambled pancakes topped with applesauce and powdered sugar.
We’re huddled together outside at a high-top table shoveling pastry in our mouths when two middle-aged German men approach and motion to the open space across from us. We gesture for them to join, and my eyes bulge when they set their bowls down: huge dumplings bob in a pool of white sauce. “What is that?” I ask, my eyes still wide. “Dampfnudel,” the man next to me replies. He digs his fork in, scoops up the first bite, and FEEDS IT to me. The man he’s with does the same for Sean.
They’re brothers, we learn through deliberate but enthusiastic English. Not from Munich but from Ingolstadt, “Home of Audi,” the man next to Sean says proudly, his eyes gleaming. After feeding me one more bite, this time dunked in vanilla cream sauce, the man next to me implores me to “go to YouTube and search for ‘dampfnudel.’ Then you make it yourself!”
The setting: The Festzelt Tradition tent, our second day at Oktoberfest.
The scene: Before I headed to the bathroom, our companions at our table were an Australian couple. Now that I’m back, we’re surrounded by a gaggle of blue-eyed Bavarians, and the Australians are getting ready to leave.
The man sitting across from Sean is the first to make contact. He speaks slowly and shyly, but his English is (as always) much better than our German, so we make do just fine. I ask if the other men he’s with speak English too. “They can,” he says, “but it makes them nervous.”
About half-way through our liters of beer, though, those pesky nerves have been drowned and disposed of, and we’re all shouting to each other over the oompah music. The man sitting next to Sean asks if we have kids. When I show him Layla, he laughs and says, “Much easier!” The man sitting across from me has lived in the U.S. before: “Tuscaloosa!” he says. “Oh!” we reply, “Good American football!” And indeed, he’s been to the stadium. The conversation eventually turns to Trump and Merkel, but we’re so beer soaked by that point that even they can’t spoil the fun.
The setting: A very local bar very far away from the festival grounds, after our third day at Oktoberfest.
The scene: It’s been a weird, crowded day. We’re tired and hungry, and our waitress does her best to explain the menu to us. (Like me, she only knows how to translate a handful of food words from German to English.) We point to the currywurst and schnitzel with mushrooms, and ask for “zwie bier, bitte” (“two beers, please”). There’s a soccer game on, and the old German regulars are into it. (One of my favorite things to do while traveling is watch soccer at bars, so I’m into it too.)
Suddenly the serenity is interrupted by a nasally screech of English: “Oooooh yeeeeeeah, Jager shots! Dank-uh shoooooe-nnnn!” The girl sitting behind us has obviously spent the day at Oktoberfest turning in to Janice from F•R•I•E•N•D•S. For the next hour, we endure squawk after squawk about the 29-year-old German “baaaaaayyyy-beeee!” she’s picked up and about her experiences “as an American.”
When she finally (mercifully) leaves, our waitress says something to the regulars sitting across from us and her knees buckle as she mockingly wipes her brow. I look at her and laugh, and she smiles widely at me and jams her fingers in her ears. I roll my eyes and nod, and she lets the regulars know that I’m on their side. One of them turns to me as I’m dramatically zipping up my lips, and he mimicks me for the guys sitting at his table. We point at each other and our faces light up. We are F•R•I•E•N•D•S.
What’s the first thing you think of when I say Colombia? Cocaine? Pablo Escobar? Narcos? FARC? Terrorism? That’s fair. But what if I told you everything you thought you knew about the country is wrong?