Oktoberfest

Hä Dear Reader!

This weekend I went on my first trip away from Konstanz – a road trip to München (Munich) to visit the Oktoberfest with my German friend and an American girl. To get to München from Konstanz we had to drive through Switzerland and Austria, giving us a good view of the other major German-speaking countries.

On Friday, we had a look around München city-centre and visited the Rathaus, to get the obligatory tourist photo, plus the struggle to fit the whole building one frame! I’d like to go back for a better explore at some point, when there are less tourists, and at a time when I can watch the Glockenspiel carillon moving around.

After our site-seeing, we went to the Augustiner-Grossgaststätte, one of the traditional Bier Kellers in München, for a Weiβwurst Frühstück – a Bavarian speciality consisting of white sausages, sweet mustard, Brezel (pretzel) and beer. According to the Bavarians, you should not eat the skin on the white sausage, as only the tourists eat it – it should either be sliced off or the innards sucked out, leaving the skin on the plate.

In the afternoon we went Lederhose shopping for my friend – we spent two hours in the shop trying to get the right fit and colour for him. Eventually we managed to get some which looked really good – but only after the shop’s owner, “der Meister”, had sufficiently touched him up and made me look at various men’s bottoms to give my opinion on how fitted the Lederhose were: the tighter around the bottom the better apparently! It is possible to spend a fortune on Lederhose as they can cost anything from around 100Euro upwards; one Brewer that we met spent over 1,000Euro on his Tracht!

In the evening, I was given my first view of the Oktoberfest – a huge funfair stretching out across the Theresienwiese (or Wies’n for short) – not at all what I was expecting! Naïvely, I was thinking of a more traditional Oktoberfest – as though it had never changed from the original celebrations of the October 1810 of the wedding of the Bavarian Crown Prince and Princess Therese. On this day, the happy couple celebrated their marriage by hosting a huge party and horse race on the Theresienwiese, named after the Princess; the party has been repeated ever since, but was extended into September for the better weather. In my head I was imagining a glorified street party in multiple tents, with lots of beer and traditional music, and though this does occur, it was the sheer modernity of festival which shocked me!

Dressed in my mother’s old dirndl, which she has gifted to me for my German knowledge development, we wondered around the carnival watching people dressed in their finest Tracht – Dirndls, Lederhose and anything in-between! There are so many varieties of Dirndls for ladies to wear; it seems that anything goes in terms of length, style and colour – so long as the top is low-cut-ish; there is ribbon cross-hatched across the front; and an apron, with the bow tied so as to indicate the marital status of the wearer. We happily munched our way through chocolate covered fruit and caramelised nuts, staples of German festival food, and got lost in the crowds swarming around and going on rides.

Early on Saturday, we headed back to the Oktoberfest to arrive at the beer tents for 9am, which is when the tents open at weekends. We decided to go to the Spatenbräu Ochsenbraterei, as our new Brewer friend brews beer for Spaten, so we felt we should sample his efforts. By five past nine the tent was heaving, and we struggled to find a table amid the throng of around 5,000 Tracht-ers. Luckily we managed to grab a bench, and by ten past were happily slurping at our Maβs of beer (or Radler, given it was still early!). The beer itself is brewed specially for the Oktoberfest, so that it is less gassy and so it is possible to pour out a full litre without too much of a frothy head on it.

The Oktoberfest was soon in full swing, with a traditional oompa band leading us through traditional German drinking songs, such as “Ein Prostit, Ein Prostit, Der Gemütlichkeit” during which one must raise their Maβ and then Prost with all the people on the table with you; as well as more modern songs like Sweet Caroline. Needless to say we were quickly all up on the benches dancing joyfully, as though we had all been long-lost friends from years gone by…

Sleeping Companions

Ach Dear Reader!

Despite sleeping with the window firmly closed, I have managed to acquire some new sleeping companions, leaving me with more bites than face at the moment. My body is covered in bumps and bites, but at least I have stopped waking up in the middle of the night due to itching.

Apparently it is normal to have lots of biting insects around in September because of the lake, and as soon as the weather changes for winter they will no longer be around. Although I have been very much enjoying the beautiful sunny weather, I'm ready to lose my new facial and body decorations! My fellow internationals do not appear to be as affected as I have been - perhaps I am acting as the bait so that they don't get bitten...

It seems though that the temperature is changing - each day it is getting colder and I've started having to wear a coat in the daytime. I've even resorted to walking to uni because it is too cold to wait at the bus-stop for the same amount as it takes to walk.

Yet, do not worry dear friends, I have not swollen or frozen so badly that I am unrecognisable - nothing a nice mug of tea and some Photoshop cannot sort out!

Rothaus Brewery

Liebe Grüβe Dear Reader!

Today (Wednesday) I visited one of the many German breweries in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest): Die Badischen Staatsbrauereit Rothaus; known as Rothaus for short. The Rothaus brewery is the highest brewery in Germany, lying high up in the mountains, with very little around it! It was started in 1791 by a monk, but the original buildings are no longer still standing due to a large fire and it had to be rebuilt in 1905. Apparently, since Rothaus began the beer recipe has not changed and, though the technology has advanced, the process has remained mostly the same.

Our visit began with a tour around the brewery, in the same order that the beer also travels. The smell of beer accompanies you around the trip, though it does change slightly as you venture around. Unfortunately, I cannot remember all the processes, so I’ll just give you some of the highlights from my own understanding and memory. According to the Rheinheitsgebot (German purity laws for beer) there are only three main ingredients to make beer: water, malt and hops. Yeast is also added at some point during the process to act as an enzyme, but is removed later on in the beer making.

To start we were shown some huge copper vats, which is used to mix, heat, separate and generally serve as a multi-purpose for the beginning stages of beer. If anyone would like to (re-)explain the process to me, then feel free to post in the comments section below! It is here that the malt is broken down into malt sugars, ready for the yeast to do its work at helping the beer to ferment.

We then stood beneath some of the storage silos where the beer is kept for fermenting – they were huge, containing 180,000litres of beer each! The beer is kept there for roughly a week at 8-10°C for normal beer or 3-4days at 15-20°C for Hefeweizen, which is another type of beer that tastes a bit different. It is here that the yeast is added, from either the top or the bottom, depending on what type of beer is being brewed.

Next we went to see the packing place for the Zäpfle, the 33cl bottles of beer – filled at a rate of roughly 55,000-60,000 bottles per hour! I quite enjoyed watching thousands of little bottles speeding around the room at breakneck speed, but I’m not sure how well I would cope going quite that fast round so many tight bends…

Interestingly, the non-alcoholic beer is made in the same way, but is then sent to a special place in Germany to have the alcohol removed. There is only one place in the whole of Germany that does this, and still manages to keep the taste of the beer intact. Now I can understand why Alkoholfrei Bier (alcohol-free beer) is as expensive as the real thing!

After the tour, we were given the opportunity to try as many of the beers as we wanted, accompanied by freshly baked bread and sausage-meat-spheres. As a result we tried all the types of beer that Rothaus makes; though I am still not enamoured with the taste of beer (perhaps I should try out a few more breweries), I feel I can at least now distinguish some of the types of beer from the others, even if I’m not quite sure what the various names are!

PROST!

Prost Dear Reader!

This weekend I have warmed up for my visit to the original Oktoberfest in München, by going to the Deutsch-Schweizer Oktoberfest am Bodensee in Konstanz. The Konstanz Oktoberfest claims to be the third largest in Germany, with the other being Stuttgart. However, with only two beer tents and an eerily deserted fairground, one has to wonder how little the rest of Germany celebrates! Perhaps they have their own beer festivals at another time of year…

My Konstanz Oktoberfest experience was split into two very distinctive halves (I hope at some point to rectify this and have the proper experience altogether): Saturday evening and Sunday evening.

Saturday was madness and, having followed Tracht-wearing people (i.e. Dirndls and Lederhose) to the right place, we queued up to get an entrance pin. As many of us are newly registered official Konstanz residents, we were given a Gutschein by the nice people at the foreign office for the pin, which has given us free entry for the whole festival. There were people streaming everywhere and I did feel rather out of place not dressed in traditional clothing. We decided to try out the Paulaner Festhalle/Bierzelt (Beer Tent), which was jam-packed full of people dressed appropriately. Suffice to say that in jeans, we stood out like a sore thumb. Any attempt to make it near to a table was met with a cry of “NE!” as people desperately tried to save seats either for their friends or for people rightly clad. We ended up standing between the crepe stand and the toilets – possibly not the most glamorous location, but we could observe the German (and Swiss) people having a whale of a time, while we sedately drank our München-brewed beer (or apple juice if you were me).

Determined to get into the full Oktoberfest spirit for ourselves, we went again on Sunday night. The contrast could not have been more different – the place was empty, save for a few tables in the middle of the room. We sat (note, we had a whole table to ourselves – something which is unheard of at the München Oktoberfest) nervously and order a Maβ: a litre of beer served in a special glass, known as a Stein. I ordered a Radler – a mixture of beer and lemonade – and though I made very little headway with it, probably less than a wine-glass-worth, it was good fun to have around. A litre of liquid is surprisingly heavy, but despite this the Germans seem intent on waving it in the air whilst singing drunkenly to traditional Volksleider/drinking songs. Here, I was slowly initiated into the ways of Maβ drinking:
Firstly, whenever you get a new Maβ at the table, you must all chink glasses and cry “Prost!” before drinking.

Secondly, every time the music stops, you must shout “Prost!”, cheers again and then drink.
Thirdly, there are special songs devoted to yelling “Prost!” and then drinking – it is obligatory to join in with this.
Fourthly, if someone challenges you to a drinking race, you must accept. The race starts with “Prost!” and the winner is the person who drinks the segment first. The glasses are patterned with grooves, with four in each glass – thus making up the segments.
Fifthly, if you are bored/drunk/keeping time of the music/in need of attention, bang your Stein upon the table. Continue this for as long as necessary, along with rhythmic swaying, raising your hands/glasses in the air and foot banging as directed by the conductor of the band.

To further my rehearsal for the München Oktoberfest, I have also now stood on a bench and bobbed up and down a bit. In full embracing of the stereotype, Germans really do dance on their tables in Lederhose whilst drinking beer.

All I need to do now is the get the costume sorted, plus find a man willing to dance with me donned in Lederhosen, and I will achieved one of my “aims” for this year!

Volleyball

Guten Morgen Dear Reader!

Yesterday, I attempted to learn to play Volleyball - a sport which appears to be taught in every country apart from the UK and Ireland. Suffice to say that my team with a Brit and an Irish, as well as being made up of 5 girls and only 1 boy, managed to successfully lose all 6 games out of a total of 6. However, we definitely had the best team spirit out there despite adversity!

Volleyball is relatively painful - the idea is to keep the ball in the air, by propelling it upwards using your palms and lower arms. Bare in mind that this ball is going at a rate of knots from the sky and everyone runs towards it with mad lust in their eyes, the sport becomes fairly scary quite quickly - especially for the more athletically and co-ordination-ly challenged, such as myself.

Yet, as the games continued, I feel I did improve. I very nearly managed to actually serve a ball over the net (it went in it, but quite high up - the first attempt almost hit someone on one of the neighbouring courts) and at one point actually managed to successfully hit the ball over the net itself in full play. Unfortunately my team were so busy being shocked that I had achieved something vaguely like sporting prowess, that we managed to forget that you have to keep the volley going!

Luckily I appear to have come out of the experience relatively unscathed - though my right hand is suffering from having tried to enthusiastically hit the ball single-handed! I'd like to try beach volleyball next in the sunshine, though probably without the skimpy outfit...

Imperia

Servus Dear Reader!

Last Thursday I went to visit Imperia with a new German friend of mine from München (Munich), who is also new to Konstanz. We ventured over to the harbour to find this mysterious being and were greeted by a 9metre high, 18 tonne, revolving stone statue of a prostitute – this is Imperia. She is the first thing that people see when they come to Konstanz by boat and, much to the annoyance of the locals (seriously, they had riots about her), has become a recognisable symbol of the town.

Imperia comes from a Balzac novel about the time of the Council of Konstanz. For those who do not know (and I didn’t either until the International Office told me), for a few years prior 1417 there were three different popes, all claiming to be the real pope. As a result the Catholic world was in chaos, and so in 1417, a council was formed to elect the new real pope. This took place in Konstanz, in what is now known as the Konzilgebäude, but was originally a warehouse for corn and one of the largest buildings in the whole of Germany at this time. As it turns out, the cardinals did not elect any of the three possible popes, and instead opted to vote in Pope Martin V.

According to the Imperia story, Imperia was so beautiful that all the men fell in love with her instantly, including Pope Martin V and the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund (who I believe was king in this area). In this way, Imperia could control the entire area, and this is why the pope and king are both depicted as naked sitting in Imperia’s hands. Every time she spins she looks towards the Konzilgebäude and then out to the Bodensee, and she has been turning once every 3-4minutes since 1993.

Meersburg Photos

To get to the Altes Schloss and the main Altstadt from the habour, you have to go up a massive hill! This is the view from the bottom of the hill:

This is a picture of the wonderful view you get from the castle - in the far distance is Konstanz. As you can see it was extremely sunny!!

Afterwards we headed to the Wine Festival. Here is a picture of the brass band, who were the main attraction (alongside the wine of course!)