People are people

Oktoberfest was an adventure from the start...Amy and I had walked about halfway to the train station when I relized that I had left my bus tickets sitting on my desk (baahhhh!) By the time we got back to our dorm, got the tickets and made it back to the train station, we had missed our train and had to wait an hour for the next one (definitely not the worst case scenerio!) We made it to Augsburg about 4 hours later (only an hour later than planned) and met up with two other girls from UNC who are studying in northern Germany (where I was last summer). We stayed the weekened in Augsburg and just took the train 45 minutes into Munich each day (all of the hotels, hostels, and park benches in Munich were already booked). So the first night we walked around Augsburg and saw the sights of this beautiful old town (known for its role in the doctrine of self-determination after the 30 years war, in case you were wondering). 

One of the girls from Greeley, Laura, just arrived in Germany on Wednesday and her mother traveled with here, thus her mom came with us to Oktoberfest - making me very jealous that my mom wasn't at Oktoberfest with me...

So this picture (above) is of Laura, her mom and Louisa, the German exchange student from Munich that lived with their family for the last year (there was a great moment in the train station in which Louisa's mom got to finally meet the woman who was the stand in mom for the last year...the beauty of human connection never ceases to move me) Louisa is clearly the one in the middle wearing the Dirndl which brings me to an important aside: traditional Bavarian clothing...

EVERYONE there was wearing Dirndls and Lederhosen (ok, well all the Germans, I fit right in with the tourist crowd in my jeans) I was not prepared for this at all. Secondly, there were shops and kiosks throughout the city where you could buy such traditional clothes for the low low price of (minimum) 200 Euro! I did hear of one guy who bought the whole lederhosen outfit (shirt, socks, shoes included) for 100 Euro, but that is the absolute lowest I ever heard of...crazy. Finally, not all of these dirndls (especially) were very traditional...we saw one that was bright pink with sequined butterflies (Schmetterling!) all over it. Oh, and we decided that it was really the manly men who wore lederhosen the whole time... (moral of the story - Oktoberfest involved a whole lot of really entertaining people-watching)

Back to the matter at hand...
Oktoberfest was like a Carnival times 1,000 - there were people of all ages, from infants all the way to very elderly people (in traditional garb, of course) There were rides and kiosks everywhere. One of my favorite discoveries was the asortment of rosted nuts (almonds, cashews, macadamia, pecans, chestnuts...you name it) the were roasted with sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon, served warm and were absolutely delicious. You could buy pretzels as big as your arm, wurst of every kind, bread and all kinds of sweets. I would have been content just walking around the carnival and riding a few rides, but having the real Oktoberfest experience was something I could never have prepared myself for...

After a long and complicated process, the details of which I will omit here...let me know if you really want to know...we got into the Löwenbräuhaus tent (pictured above and below) The funny thing is, people talk about Oktoberfest and how the beer is served in tents by the big breweries and that was pretty much what I imagined - an actual tent, people coming and going. No. Absolutely not - it was like the coloseum or the main hall at the stock show - probably as big as a football field and a hard-sided building with more tables than you would think could fit in the space. 

 

Oktoberfest is a festival in every sense of the word, and I feel like I understand the nuances of this word so much more fully after this experience. There is an air of communal celebration that I have never experienced on such a grand scale. It would be impossible to sit at one of these tables and not feel the contageous joy and jocularity that filled the hall. The band in the middle played music from across the spectrum - old marches, German pop songs, drinking songs, and all kinds of international music (including but not limited to the Beatles, ABBA, John Denver and others) When the band wasn't playing, groups would randomly break into song and the whole tent would join in. The picture above is our group of 6 plus the three Germans we sat with. We had surprisingly good and deep conversations with them in the 5 or so hours we spent in the tent.

So, moral of the story, as Laura's mom, Melissa, so aptly put it - people are people. There were people from literally all over the world at Oktoberfest and despite language and cultural barriers, the joy and community spirit brought everyone together in order to celebrate in this fall festival. We are such relational beings and it only takes something like this for us to see past the walls that divide us and provide boldness to sit next to and talk with strangers in such a way that they don't feel like strangers anymore, but friends and fellow journeymen in life. I just love getting to know new people and see the imprint of God's craftmanship in their beautiful faces and Oktoberfest provided another great opportunity to do so. 

Don't worry - you'll probably hear more about this trip in the near future, but I think this is enough for one post! If you've had enough, mabye you shouldn't check back for a few days... ! ~love~