One New York Life

One of my first experiences with German beer was the Oktoberfest festival at The Great Escape theme park. The Great Escape (nee Storytown) was the only amusement park a kid whose parents didn’t care much for driving ever got to. As I got older, I thought it was odd that they had a German beer festival in an amusement park for little kids. The beer tent sat in abandoned corner of the park and was pretty much boarded up for the entire season. When I finally went there in college, it was a blast. Liters of beer, drunk rides, and mini-golf. Really, does it get better?

After seeing the real thing, the fact an amusement park runs this thing was a little less strange. The tent at the Great Escape was really just an order-of-magnitude smaller tent that served a few different kinds of beer.

The Building: The tents at Oktoberfest are temporary structures. They seat about 6000 inside (where you need a reservation) and about 1000 outside (where it’s first come first serve). We didn’t make reservations. The Lowenbrau tent featured a carved wooden lion that occasionally lifted his mug to his mouth and growled “Lowenbrau”. It also featured a Tower with the drinking lion on top. If you were to walk in these buildings, you’d have no idea they aren’t there all year. The one negative, as I’d discover was the norm in these tents, the bathroom featured a metal, full room piss-trough. This made peeing an adventure.

The People: This was the most interesting of the three days we spent at the festival proper. New Zealanders, Australians, a guy wearing a serving girl dress who, as we discovered, got beat up the night before so he decided it was a bright idea to do it again and, these dudes.

The Service: Even more than Hofbrauhaus, the servers just kind of faded in to the background and then just materialized when they were needed. I’m also pretty sure that none of them spoke English but delivered everything flawlessly.

The Food: The food of the day here was a steamed half-chicken, some peppery sausage, and more sauerkraut. German food, as I discovered here, is very salty. The chicken was very clearly just cut down the middle and steamed. The meat was as tender and moist as any chicken I’ve ever tasted. The only preparation type that makes sense for the flavor is steamed. The sausage was the best sausage of the trip. It was pale white and had a distinct peppery flavor that I didn’t taste for the rest of the weekend. This was also the day we discovered spaatzle — though we wouldn’t get it until the next day.

The Beer: According to Wikipedia, the American version of Lowenbrau has been brewed by Miller Brewing company without necessarily following the Reinheitsgebot. This goes a long way toward explaining why the Lowenbrau served at the Festhalle was immeasurably better than the American version I’ve had in the past. For reference, American Lowenbrau would probably score in the low 20s on the snob scale. The version I drank in the beer hall was probably in the low to mid 40s. I’m the first to admit that much of this could be the mental state of drinking the beer sitting outside, in Germany, at Oktoberfest — but I argue that it was crisper, smoother, fresher, and didn’t have any trace of the strange aftertaste that I’ve always thought of as Lowenbrau’s signature. My second, and more solid point, PLR took it down like a box of wine. As for me — the scene in Beerfest when they sample the beer and it brings tears to their eyes? Like that but more tears.

The Bill: I…. have no idea. Lowenbrau day started at 10:00 am and ended at sometime after 2:00 pm. The Lowenbrau tent featured €8.50 litres. I’m relatively certain, though, that the tents were cheaper then the restaurants.

After 14 hours of travel, another 6 hours of timeshift, we arrived at Munich hotel with a hankerin to do, well, something. Oktoberfest wasn’t starting for another 12 hours so we decided to get caught in a tourist trap because, well, we’re tourists.

We specifically chose our hotel because Trip Advisor told us we’d be equidistant (about a 10 minute walk) from both Oktoberfest proper and the “downtown” section of Munich. Whether this is “downtown” like Times Square is “downtown” I’m particularly sure. All I know is we walked past a KFC, a McDonalds, a bunch of stores touting “New York Fashion”, and lots of packed restaurants with outdoor seating. After getting temporarily lost (which I’ll get in to later) trying to find the place, we found this lantern like a beacon in the night. We’d found Hofbrauhaus.

Hofbrauhaus was founded relatively recently in 1589 when the Duke of Bavaria decided that all the local Munich brews sucked and decided to open a brewery. His son, in 1602, decided that he liked wheat beers — so he made it illegal for anyone but him to brew wheat beer. Savvy business. Since 400 years ago, it’s turned in to (apparently) the most tourist-trappy of all the Brauhauses. Of course, as this was the day BEFORE Oktoberfest opened for business, all of these brauhauses were packed and this one was no different. When we finally got in, we were treated to a type of beer hall that just doesn’t exist here.

The Building: I can’t really even describe the size of this building. We walked about trying to find a table for about 15 minutes and I’m pretty sure we didn’t even walk through every possible room. We walked past a German “oompah” band… maybe 2… not sure. After walking around for 10 minutes we somehow ended up in the outside courtyard. This was delightful as it was approximately 150 degrees with 243% humidity inside. Once outside we still had to work to find a table before finally settling in sharing a table with a few random German folk. Before we even had a chance to settle in, a table of the perfect size for four opened up and I think I may have thrown one of my traveling-mates at it. Whatever.

The People: This was kind of the first chance I had to see the difference between the overly drunk German crowd and an an overly drunk American crowd. While it was rather loud, it was not nearly as rowdy as I expected save for a few dudes behind me who couldn’t keep their pants on. Literally. They liked showing their asses.

The Service: Honestly, I have no idea how these people made it through the crowd, but it seemed every time we needed a pretzel or another litre, they just materialized out of thin air. We had two different male servers over the course of the night (fully decked out in drinkin pants’) as I would become continually amazed at their skill. The most amusing part of the evening — even though we were sitting outside, we could see in to some of the inside rooms. At one point, people at a table decided to start banging their mugs on the table and chanting the riff from the White Stripe’s Seven Nation Army (this was a popular chant so I’m curious where the Stripes stole it from). Everyone in the room started joining in. As it got progressively louder and rowdier, a rather matronly looking German serving woman entered the room, threw a severe look in to the room, and raised a finger. Everyone shushed. It was amazing.

The Food: How different can sausage be? Different. We didn’t really have our wits about enough due to jet-lag and beer, so we simply ordered two different types of sausage with sauerkraut and pretzels. I truly dislike sauerkraut, but for whatever reason, the ingredients they add make it taste less like stinky feet and more like the vinegar mixture they soak it in. Also, this was the first indication I had that frozen hot dogs are likely made with everything that’s ever been rumored to be in them. These tasted so much better than American hotdogs. And the sausage? It had this garlic, peppery flavor that I fell in love with.

The Beer: This was the first time our tables were introduced to Litre Mugs. They are… challenging. It’s not so much that the beer isn’t good — because it is — it’s more because it starts to get a little warm by the end. I know the answer to that is “man up and drink faster” and, well, I don’t have a come back because you’re correct. The litres are €6.90 each, which roughly translates to $10.50 for 2.75 beers. While I was there, I sampled three.

• Hofbrau Original: The light. This was my first indication that the domestic versions of the imports I’ve had in the US weren’t going to quite be the same. First of all, it tasted almost nothing like the import version of Hofbrau I get the US. It’s a much crisper, cleaner version of the same thing. The “German Beer Taste” that I occasionally complain about here isn’t apparent at all. And, wow does it go down easily.
• Hofbrau Dunkel: The dark. It also became readily apparent that, just like in the US, I like dark beers better. This one felt like it had more body and a little bit more of a kick. It was also combined with sausage which, really, has to work to be bad.
• Hofbrau Weiss: Roughly equivalent the Hofbrau Hefeweizen. One of my traveling companions only likes Weisses and Hefeweizens so I got to sample a bunch of these which I otherwise wouldn’t have bothered with. Nothing I’m hugely in to but good for a Hefeweizen.

The Bill: Amazingly reasonable. Nine Liters of beer, food for four, just over $100.

Highly recommended.

If you’re male, the Oktoberfest discussion has probably come up as an awesome, drunken idea at some point between college and now. Usually something along the lines of:

“We should totally go to Oktoberfest this year.”
“I’ll f*ckin go. Let’s go!”
“Yeah, let’s do it. I’m in!”
“Yes, it’ll be so awesome!”

Predictably, it falls apart. So when I got a random phone call from PLR back in April following an all-you-can-drink brunch in which she and her co-workers decided we were totally going to Oktoberfest I took it with a grain of salt. But, lo and behold, when you’re older and can actually afford things, plans have less of a tendency to fall apart. Imagine my surprise when it actually happened.

We pick up the day, in progress, after I left work.

3:30 pm: Leave work. 9:00 to 3:30 is a shift of champions. It needs to happen more often.

3:35 pm: Enter first Chase bank of the day on 46th and Lexington. I have the crazy idea to see if Chase Manhattan Bank (the largest bank in Manhattan — operating under a charter received by Aaron Burr in 1799… yes… that Aaron Burr) can exchange dollars in to Euro. I’m told this branch does not because it was just converted over from a Washington Mutual, but the one down the street does. Awesome.

3:40 pm: Enter second Chase of the day on 44th and Lexington. The bank has Wal-mart-esque greeter minus fifty years of age. I ask the nice man where I can exchange dollars for Euro. He looks at me oddly and say they don’t do that here. I say the guy down the street on 46th said you did. He tells me they will allow me to deposit Euro but they can’t sell me Euro. I give him the confused dog look. He tells me they can’t do it, but the large branch on Broadway and Wall Street will totally do it. Fortunately, this is on my way home, so cool.

4:00 pm: Get off the 4-train at Wall Street. Enter third Chase of the day on Rector Street and Broadway. Walk up to the info booth and ask the nice lady if I can exchange dollars for Euro here. She says yes! Just go see a teller! Awesome!

4:05 pm: Wait in line.

4:15 pm: Walk up to the window and ask the teller to please exchange my $300 to Euro. She gives me a blank look and tells me that they don’t keep Euro on hand here. But the nice information lady told me you could do it and I just stood in line and waited. We don’t do that here… but they DEFINITELY do it at the main branch down the street. The what? You know, the Chase Manhattan Plaza… there’s a branch in the basement. I vaguely wonder if it’s like the basement of the Alamo.

4:30: Wander north on Broadway. Find Chase Manhattan plaza.

4:40: Wandering aimlessly around Chase Manhattan plaza looking for any indication of a branch.

4:45: Enter the building to ask someone. Notice a sign that says “banking in the basement.”

4:50: Enter fourth Chase branch of the day. There is no friendly information lady this time to lie to me. Wander across acres of floor space. Seriously, I can’t communicate the size of this room. Picture taking the basement of a skyscraper and making a single room out of one quarter. Then put your banking counter against two entire walls. Then imagine the ridiculousness of that much space and THREE tellers.

4:55: Line.

5:00: Walk up the teller. Ask to exchange my dollars for Euro. Yes we do that here (fanfare!!), just go see that lady over there.

5:05: Success! Hand the nice lady $300.

5:06: Receive €190. Ouch. I blame Obama.

5:30: Finally get home. This would be an excellent time to start packing.

8:30: The car arrives. Off to JFK.

9:05: Arrive JFK. No traffic, no lines, seriously?

9:20: Through security, through check-in, bellied up to the bar for $10 cocktails with over two hours to spare. The rain-delayed Mets game is on as is the 7 pm start Yankee game just in to the 5th inning. AL baseball, catch the excitement. PLR and I start drinking overpriced cocktails but did I mention that we’re through security and check-in in 15 minutes?

9:45: Our traveling companions show up. Two of PLR’s accountant co-workers. Both female. If you’re keeping track at home, I’m traveling to a drinking festival with 3 women. Let’s see how that works out.

10:30: I’m three rounds deep and $60 in the hole. How is it I’m paying for this when I recently achieved the “oh isn’t your extra salary cute” status in this relationship?

10:45: Boarding. This might have been the greatest trip to JFK in the history of trips to JFK. Flying out in the morning is dumb.

At the moment it’s 2 pm here. We went to the actual festival at 10:30 this morning. For the first time since college I was well on the way to being drunk before noon. I usually have a very firm “no alcohol before noon” policy, but it just isn’t happening here.

1) The German “traditional Oktoberfest attire” is fantastic. We Americans refer to it lovingly as the beer wench outfit. The serving girls aren’t the only ones who wear the dresses. A huge number of the women do. And, Jesus, do they grow breasts large in Eastern Europe.

2) I’m amazed at the number of children at the festival itself. I can’t imagine having a festival based around chugging beer in the US and making it a family thing.

3) Speaking of America — I can’t imagine having a festival based around drinking that’s as low-key and relaxed as this. Almost no fighting and very little yelling. It’s amazing.

4) The Lowenbrau Tent has the piss trough. That’s all they have. You walk in to a restroom and the 3 walls are just piss trough. I forgot how much I hate the piss trough.

5) I’m trying to determine if Lowenbrau or Hofbrau is the Budweiser of Germany. The Hofbrauhaus seems like the super tourist biergarten in the city of Munich. There are some stories to tell from that place. Including one of the girls I was with getting picked up by a German Backstreet Boy and me ending up at a dance club in cargo shorts.

6) Munich is an awesome city. I really would like to come here sometime when it’s not Oktoberfest just to look around. But, there’s an outside chance that Oktoberfest becomes a yearly or semi-yearly trip. It’s hard to explain just how low-key everything is while being insanely shitshowy.

7) The purity law is really noticable. The beers here are so much crisper and better than American beers with all the crazy additives that it’s not even funny. Everything tastes fresher and different. Even the Lowenbrau.

8) Sadly, no Meisterbrau.

9) The Big Show: Do you want a stein, a T-shirt, or both. What brand beer do you want a stein for. I got you coasters so far.