If one takes the time to think about it, one of the most fascinating aspects of Oktoberfest is the bands. Live music played before a malleable and excitable audience can be a show within a show. There is a band in each tent rocking the party tunes after dusk when the tone of the party… Read More Oktoberfest: Top-10 non-American Songs
Since Richard Wagner’s death, the music story in Germany has been one of a long, slow, seemingly unending and inexorable decline, with The Scorpions, Kraftwerk, and Rammstein the few exceptions. Perhaps there is no brighter, glaringer example of this than at Oktoberfest. The songs heard at Oktoberfest with German lyrics are often also sung at… Read More Oktoberfest: Top-10 American Songs
THE LONDON TIMES Filed on October 13th, 1810 Munich — Yesterday, on a cold, damp, drizzly Friday afternoon, October 12th, 1810, Bavaria’s Crown Prince Ludwig married Princess Therese Charlotte Luise Frederica Emilie of Saxony-Hildburghausen, at the Hofkapelle inside Munich’s Residence, in front of about 200 witnesses. Bavaria’s favorite son, and Saxony’s most eligible lady-in-waiting tied the knot just after 2 pm. During a… Read More Oktoberfest’s Backstory: Ludwig Meets His Match
You, Oktoberfest, are without compare, Overpriced everything, and especially the beer. Drunken Debauchery, in December we’ll do a detox, Fill up on roast pork, dumplings, or a slice from an ox. Fill up my glass, sir, 12 euros is very dear. With girls scantily clad, call it tradition I might add, After a liter or… Read More Oktoberfest: An Ode
This post is a guest post from my good friend Albert Mooney, who sums up succinctly what about half of the people in Munich actually think about Oktoberfest. It must be like living in Rio and hating Carnival. Or being a Dubliner who dreads St. Patrick’s Day. Or a citizen of Nero’s Rome who has long grown… Read More Oktoberfest: Confessions of a Hater
Exactly 32 years ago today, a pear-shaped man named Sepp (Josef) looked at his watch, took a last sip of his coffee, and grabbed his cap. The sun was trying to switch on under a thick blanket of ubiquitous grey German sky. As he was leaving the bakery all he could think about was how… Read More Oktoberfest: A Bad Reception
On 14 June in Munich, Germany will host Scotland in the European Football Championship (U€FA €uro®). You know, the football championship where players play the game with their foots! For the Americans reading, I call our college football and NFL “American Football”, and what we call soccer there is football to me here, as I… Read More “Summer Footie”
Bavaria loves princesses, emperesses, and queens, especially Princess Therese Charlotte Luise Friederike Amalie von Sachsen-Hildburghausen, or simply Therese, who married Bavarian King Ludwig I in 1810 and became queen. Oktoberfest is the traditional celebration of that marriage. Bavarians adore Sisi. Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie, or Empress Sisi, was born in Munich and raised near Lake Starnberg… Read More Bavarian Queens
The sunrise yesterday was immense and memorable. Exactly 18 years ago, yesterday, here in Munich, it was a mirror image on that fateful day, with a cool morning followed by a warm, sunny afternoon. Brilliant sun and sky. In 2011, I was on my way to work. On one stretch of Tagernseer-Landstrasse where my destination… Read More My September Eleventh Reflections
A story that came out recently about a woman who documented Deutsche Bahn’s (lack of) punctuality by knitting a color-coded scarf and selling it on eBay for charity reminded me of a story one of my students told me about the railway company. My student, who I will call Sepp and the woman who knitted… Read More Germans Surprised by Punctual Train (F)
On Christmas Eve in 1705, a group of peasants, farmers and working men from all across Upper Bavaria, gathered in Sendling, a few kilometers southwest of Munich. They did not come to listen to priests or other holy men speak about Jesus or Christmas or anything else religious. They came to overthrow the yoke of… Read More A not very Merry Christmas
