A thousand Bavarians and five Michiganders followed the parading musicians all the way to the beer tent. This spectacle lasted over an hour, which was impressive considering the parade route was only 300 meters long. The festivities began at a tiny tent where they handed out free beer to anyone who showed up, like some kind of Bavarian frat party. Local music troupes gathered nearby for a battle-of-the-bands performance that nobody won. Finally the parade actually started to assemble. A four-horsepower beer wagon appeared from nowhere and screeched to a halt in front of us. I was delighted by the mare at the back right, who was having none of this and kept trying to headbutt anything that came close to her. A child next to me was delighted by other things the mare was doing, and he screamed “Guck, die caca!,” which even the Michiganders could understand. Once the parade got going, the usual suspects streamed past: medieval LARPers, a fake bishop, the former mayor, the current mayor, guys carrying rifles and shooting blanks for some reason. We, meaning my American college friend Corissa and her partner Brian and Brian’s local German work crew including their boss, watched the small-town procession almost to its very end. Then our spirit guide for the night, the bossman, who generally moved around like a busy giraffe, abruptly strode off towards the beer tent.
The usual gauntlet of carnival games and twirling rides led us straight to the “tent,” a massive singularity that exists solely for Burghausen’s annual Mai Wiesn festival and is actually a permanent fixture in a town of only 19,000 residents. I swear every one of those residents was present and wearing their Tracht, which is better known abroad as lederhosen and dirndls. Sadly I’m a bad immigrant who doesn’t even own a dirndl (yet). Worse, I don’t even drink regular beer! The locals were kind enough to let me into the tent anyways.
Banners in Bavarian blues dripped from the ceiling. The traditional wooden Volksfest tables and benches were strategically wedged together, both to pack in more people and for structural support because people would eventually stand on the benches to dance. From the very second I slid all the way down the bench of Table Number 4, there were strangers’ butts and spines wedged against mine. I had half a view to the far end of the tent, where a cover band was already belting out Sweet Caroline or something, probably. A server strode past carrying a tray of food that was nearly the size of a door, and a beer wench followed with eight Maß full of golden beer clenched in her fists. What year was it again?
I was surrounded on all sides by Bavarians I’d just met, so I took the chance to ask some very important questions. What’s the point of the calf warmers worn with lederhosen shorts? They’re separate from the rest of the sock so you don’t have to wash them (ever?). Are lederhosen comfortable? Yes, way more than jeans. What did the name of my bottled wine spritzer, Wuschige [Uschi], mean? The bossman ducked his head and laughed until he finally managed to answer “ehm…horny.” (Just ask Google next time, Jill, geez). The second round of drinks was accompanied by a meter-long plank filled with charcuterie and soft pretzels. The plank was stacked on top of two Maß and therefore directly in front of my face, which was the perfect complement to the strangers’ butts still wiggling against mine. By the time I got overwhelmed and begged off early for the night, everyone around us was dancing on the benches. In my opinion it’s these benches, not the cars, that are Germany’s best engineering feat, considering the amount of abuse they can withstand.
Part of Burghausen’s castle, the longest in the world // inside the beer tent
On the second night, after a lovely day hike through the German Alps, I actually felt prepared for the Wiesn. We arrived just after sundown and stayed long enough to close down the main tent. That’s not quite as impressive as it sounds because it closed with the national curfew at 10 p.m., but never fear. Our second night’s spirit guide, who was slightly shorter but still Bavarian, knew a place: just behind the beer tent was a carousel with a bar at the center of it. We hopped aboard and went for the world’s slowest ride. Literally, a snail could have overtaken us. Still, how many times can you say you’ve been on a carousel with a bar at the center of it (and more importantly, why aren’t they more popular)? I was only two drinks south of sober and having a ball. It didn’t matter that I was just talking about airport security lines with one of my oldest friends and three of my newest ones were talking about starting their own drunk carousel business. It didn’t matter that the ride was somehow making me dizzy and I knew it would be a bad idea to go near the more fun/violent carnival rides I’d been eyeing the whole night, even when our spirit guide offered to go with me. None of it mattered because we were all there together, against all the odds of the universe.
The German language famously has a lot of hyper-specific words, but as far as I know, it doesn’t have any word for the feeling when you meet people and realize there’s a non-zero chance you’ve crossed paths before. Maybe you passed them on the street, maybe it was decades ago, or maybe it was a near miss and you were still a few kilometers apart. That weekend I met people from my home state who went to the same school as I did, whose families live near the same village as mine, who were probably in the same cities at the same time as me. One of them even reminded me of my uncle. Had I ever seen any of them before? It’s even weirder when the feeling flips in the other direction and I start to wonder how many people are just out of reach, or if any of the strangers I pass on the street will be a friend later, and how many I’ll come close to but never meet at all. And that’s what this weekend had almost been: a near miss. I was only on that carousel because a week beforehand, Brian (who I’d never met either) decided to bring Corissa with him on his work trip so she and I could hang out, and I happened to have the weekend free. If none of those butterfly wings had flapped, I would have missed this entire fork in the path of life and all the delightful people waiting for me on it. Luckily the carousel jerked into motion and brought me back to the present, saving me from being crushed underneath that particular train of thought.
Like a bunch of kids half our ages, we closed down the carousel bar too. It was only midnight and we hadn’t yet turned into pumpkins, so we herded ourselves into the nearby wine tent, aka the only place at the festival still open. It was a place best described as a “dive club.” A whole building of Gen Zers jumped around to Justin Bieber songs that were played back-to-back in between Schlager and Madonna songs by the world’s worst DJ. My body needed to dance, and I went along for the ride. My usual goal on the dance floor is to be the weirdest person in the room. It’s usually pretty easy to do, but that night I had stiff competition from Brian. Both of us hopped and flailed in Corissa’s general direction, trying to encourage her to join us, but her jetlag and possibly secondhand embarrassment kept her feet planted in place. No bother. I could be weird enough for us all.
Alas, the wine tent managed to defeat us. We left the actual kids who were half our ages in charge of closing it down, and together we wove our way back home, before splitting back onto our separate life paths, doubtless all of us richer for having met at all.
Me and Corissa, still friends after 18 years // Obersee in Berchtesgaden
What a great impromptu adventure, Jill Terese. Corrisa and her friends are keepers & her partner is a wise planner, bring her to visit and play