Oktoberfest

I went to Oktoberfest yesterday. I wasn't all that pumped about it, really, but I would have felt ridiculous if I hadn't gone at all. People come from all over the world to come to this, and I live literally a mile away. So I went with two vague acquaintances to see what all the hubbub was about. The hubbub, I now know, is about drinking. Of course I knew that Oktoberfest revolved around drinking, but I assumed that there would be the pretense that something else was going on (this is what happens at Mardi Gras, or at weddings). But in true German fashion they don't beat around the bush, and Oktoberfest is really no more than a million tables at which people sit and drink beer. Sure, there are funny clothes and oom-pa-pa bands, but those are all over the place in Germany anyway. Also after around 9 PM the oom-pa-pa music is replaced by techno music.

The drinking, though, is taken very seriously. You can only buy drinks in one-liter containers, and only special Oktoberfest beer is served. I've since learned that this beer contains much more alcohol than normal beer (7% or so). Drinking one of these liters is roughly equivalent, then, to drinking a bottle of wine. But if someone said to you, "Let's go and sit at a table and we'll each drink four bottles of wine and then go on a slide and then almost fall into the train tracks" you would say, "No thank you." But this is, really, all that Oktoberfest is.

What makes it especially deadly is that each drink doesn't seem like a bottle of wine; it seems like one beer. So you don't really notice what you are doing. I've had to use context clues and photographic evidence to piece together the last few hours of the evening. The only thing I'm completely certain of is that I arrived home without losing my wallet, and at some point I must have fallen because I have a big bruise on my hip. Actually I must have fallen twice, because I remember one uncatastrophic fall. We went on this huge slide, and to get to the top you're supposed to step onto this speedy conveyor belt that, theoretically, zips you up. If everyone had been of sound mind, and/or we had been boxes instead of people, this would have worked OK. In reality, it was much slower than stairs because every single person immediately fell down and many of them didn't seem that interested in getting back up again.

So the drinking part of Oktoberfest is dangerous and kind of banal, but the relatively unsung cuisine is much better: the best part of Oktoberfest is probably the pretzels. I love pretzels of all shapes and sizes, and Oktoberfest has the biggest and most delicious pretzels I have ever seen. They are literally about 18 inches across. In keeping with the reductio ad absurdum nature of Oktoberfest, all of the beer snacks are incredibly salty. One guy was selling huge platters of tasteless radishes absolutely covered in salt; this was a short step away from simply paying someone to pour salt down your throat. It was amazing.

Also these two extras from Joe Dirt were at Oktoberfest, which was nice.

Youtube is superior to reality

I have just wasted an inordinate amount of time watching Youtube videos. My current favorites:

The Original Magic Bullet

The real highlight here is the part about the muffins, which starts around the 2 minute mark. Wait for Hazel to come lurching into the shot at 2:15, followed by the mixing of blueberry muffins that look exactly like tar.

My other favorite is the whole family of "Windows 7 Launch Party" videos. I have watched all of them, which took about 30 minutes. The best one is still, probably, "The Introductory Video." If you watch the oven timer you can see that this informal gathering took over two hours to shoot. My other favorite might be the "Turn Your Party Into a Movie!" video. The true aficionado will note that the pictures on the screen are not from the right party, but rather from the "Snap, Shake, and Peek!" party, which features old people and apparently an outdoor portion in which everyone hugged each other. There's something mesmerizing about the sheer audacity of this campaign. They want us to have Windows tutorials at our homes, with our multiracial group of friends, for fun! "Gather round, friends, and we'll install printer drivers and anti-viral software!" Also, who on earth actually puts out balloons at a party?

In other news, I just saw a New Zealand band called "Die! Die! Die!" at a club called 59:1. The band was actually pretty good, like a mix between the Blood Brothers and Tokyo Police Club. But the venue was tragic and extremely Munich. For one thing, there was almost nobody there. 10 people, maybe. That is not necessarily a terrible thing. But the whole place seemed like a simulacrum, somehow. Everything was just kind of off. The DJ before played nothing but Foo Fighters, except for one Marcy Playground (!) song. The walls had, predictably, promotional posters, but for bands who had never even played at this venue (i.e. the posters advertised shows elsewhere in Munich). There were also two framed posters right next to the stage, one of Henry Rollins and one of the Ramones (nothing is more punk rock than tasteful frames). Top it off with a few stickers halfheartedly placed on the bathroom wall, and you have the Epcot Center version of a normal venue.

Q: Wie viel Uhr ist es? A: Party-Zeit!

My roommate, Flo, had a birthday party on Friday. Birthdays are handled strangely in Germany: in America, the birthday boy/girl is usually pampered a little bit. People buy him/her dinner, organize a gathering, whatever. In Germany, you have to shoulder onerous responsibilities on your own birthday. The night before Flo's birthday, he was baking a cake to bring into work. So on your birthday, you are supposed to bring cake and give it to other people! Then you have a big party at which you buy copious amounts of food/drink with your own money, and that of your reluctant roommate, and then tons of people come over and don't bring you anything. No drinks, no presents. So basically on your birthday you have to entertain everyone you know, at great personal cost.

Also, if it is around Oktoberfest, everyone will wear lederhosen. Even though Oktoberfest had not technically started, I guess everyone was welling with so much Bavarian pride that all the men wore lederhosen, and the ladies all wore a dress called a Dirndl, which looks a milkmaid's dress. What's amazing is that there is absolutely no sense of irony about it. As can be seen in this blurry photo, I myself wore a pair of lederhosen; Flo for some reason has two. I found them very funny. Objectively, they are ridiculous. The cut is very unflattering, there is ornate embroidery all over it, and a huge flap at the front which is only used for going to the bathroom. Those who are really with it have complex suspenders, a hat, and special leather shoes. Even though everyone is dressed like lumberjacks at the prom, they dance to techno music and drink complicated shots and do everything else that Germans normally do at a party. It is very surreal to watch a roomful of men in lederhosen dancing to "Blue."

This was the longest social event I've ever been to that was conducted solely in German. I did pretty well for the first hour or so, when it was relatively quiet. But when everyone started pouring in and yakking at light speed, I was completely lost. I found, though, that by concentrating on facial tics and body language, I could figure out my expected contribution to the conversation without knowing what it was about (laugh, nod, say "huh!", etc).

This was very taxing and not a great deal of fun, so I went to sleep pretty early (i.e. around 2). Unfortunately, for complex architectural reasons, the party was still technically going on in my room, while I was sleeping (still in my lederhosen). One girl was somehow under the impression that I was Norwegian, so she shook me awake and started talking to me in Norwegian. If you are very tired, this is the one thing that is bound to make you exceptionally angry and disoriented. I mean, even if I were Norwegian, this would not be a normal thing to do. I think that she spoke no other languages. Anyway, I certainly could not communicate with her, so through gestures I asked her to leave me alone and not steal anything. Ah, new friends!

Terry Eagleton on Richard Dawkins, Marx, Madonna

Interviewer: I’ve been interested to see how Richard Dawkins calls himself a “post-Christian atheist” and talks about celebrating Christmas.

TE: I think, actually, he’s a pre-Christian atheist, because he never understood what Christianity is about in the first place! That would be rather like Madonna calling herself post-Marxist.

Excursus on living online

I'm in Germany, technically. But not really. Really I'm pretty much on the internet, which feels kind of weird. It seems like it was only a few years ago that the interweb was used mainly for watching dancing baby or downloading Green Day albums from Napster. But now I receive almost everything I need from the mysterious world wide web: on a normal day, I conduct a fair amount of my research online, I talk to people on Skype, I waste buckets of time consuming internet idiocy, and I download and watch TV shows (there is a TV in my room that I've barely turned on). Pretty much everything I'm used to in America is available online; I remember the first time I lived abroad, and it was a completely different and much more alienating experience. But maybe that was a good thing. Because I could think, you know, the internet sure is making this living-abroad thing easier, especially as I didn't really want to do it anyway. But then the scary thing is that I live on the internet as much when I'm at home as I do here. So if I'm not in Germany when I'm in Germany, am I in America when I'm in America? Where am I? Living on the wires like Lawnmower Man, I guess.

I think that, since I spend all day reading writers from 100 years ago who were absolutely convinced that their generation was in complete spiritual collapse, I've started to feel the same way by osmosis. Two quotations that have struck me recently:

Péguy: "We are practically specimens ... We are ourselves going to be archives, archives and charts, fossils, witnesses, survivors of these historic ages. Charts that one consults. We are very badly situated. In chronology. In the succession of generations ... We are the last. Practically after-the-last."

Father Zosima (1880!): "We are assured that the world is becoming more and more united, is being formed into brotherly communion, by the shortening of distances, by the transmitting of thoughts through the air. Alas, do not believe in such a union of people."

Also I found a funny thing in the archives: I was reading through the retreat notes from Quickborn, an important Catholic youth movement (someone had written a sort of chronicle of their trips). Mostly it says things like "heard a lecture from so and so" but then without fanfare it announces (my translation): "In the afternoon, around five, mountain sickness broke out. 86 boys and 72 girls suddenly had summer diarrhea." What do you do if 158 people all get diarrhea at once?! I think that it was divine payback for having such terrible handwriting.

Second thoughts

Anyone studying German history should be aware that, in addition to the German language being very difficult already, in ye olden days they made it much more difficult by using an impossible-to-read form of handwriting called Sütterlin Schrift. I did not know of this until today but it is now destroying my life and my vision. The alphabet is reproduced above. Imagine if those squiggles were much sloppier. Look at that lower-case y!

I'm not here to feather my ruffle

I have become newly obsessed with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArZRWJwKdWs

The highlight is around 2:40, when the holy trinity of sales brokers appears.

First Paul tells us that, if we don't buy his margarine, we can go to hell. In case it's not obvious, he didn't come here to "coo and cuddle."

His successor, Gary, leaves us with the perplexing, "You'd better buy my brand. It's Hawaiian punch. When it comes to other drinks, I'll eat your lunch." The circumstances in which he will eat my lunch are very unclear.

Last up is Ronnie, "giving service with a smile because I know my fate." Years of despair are summed up in this poignant lyric.