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
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
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
We are in the middle of one of the truly great times of the year in Bavaria. Alexander Pope wrote in his poem titled “An Essay on Man”, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”, and the same can be said for spring in Bavaria and Germany, the land often shrouded in grey. The reason… Read More Spargel (Asparagus) Means Spring in Bavaria, and so much more (NF)
Laptops And Lederhosen 