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September 24 Ein PrositSo, there is a song they sing over and over (and over) at Oktoberfest called Ein Prosit. They sing it *at least* every fifteen minutes in the beer hall, and this is between such varied things as traditional Bavarian folk songs to "We Are the Champions." Any way, the song only has three words: "Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, Gemütilchkeit! Ein Prosit, Ein Prosit, Gemütilchkeit!" Which means "A toast, a toast ...." I don't know what. Whenever I asked anyone how they would translate "Gemütilchkeit" to English, all I would get is a blank stare and the either "I don't know" or "You can't." The attempts that were made said something like "cozy" or "homey," but no one seemed satisfied with this.
There are other German words, of course, that have no direct translation, and we've made use of them: Gestalt -- the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; Schadenfreude -- taking pleasure at others misfortune. Surely we can come up with the definition of Gemütilchkeit! It may enrich English as well. September 23 Oktoberfest PhotosHere are some photos I took with my phone. Not too good quality. The gentleman in some of them is my friend Russ, he has been frequently mistaken for a native Bavarian.... OktoberfestOK, it has been a while since I posted to this site, but I have to do it now: I am at Oktoberfest in Munich! By a lucky coincidence, I got sent here for work, and it just so happened that it was during Oktoberfest. It is everything you would expect it to be. There are 14 large "tents" for the various breweries. They are not really tents, though, but permanent buildings. There are six major breweries here, most have multiple tents. Spaten has 3. These things are as big as airplane hangers. Due to fire laws, when they fill up, you can't go in until someone leaves. So the key is to get there early, it opens at 11 AM and runs, beleive it or not, to only 11 PM. Then the bars fill up...
Anyway, you have to have a seat to get a beer. They have rows and rows of picnic tables and usually people are shoved in as close as possible. When the waitress walks by, you hold up a thumb (this means "one" here) and say "ein Mass, bitte." and a liter of beer shows up before you know it. Each tent has one kind of beer, so there is nothing to choose (unless you want a Radler which is beer with lemonade, or Alkohol-frei, but you don't want that do you). Each brewery has their own Oktoberfest brew, and that is what you get in the tent. They are all "Hell" meaing light in color. But some are darker than the others.
I've rated the various beers here on three criteria: taste, color, and quaffabililty. The last takes some explaining: basically, this is my subjective rating of how easily it goes down. All taste good of course, and all were pretty quaffable, the big variation was color, though none would be considered dark. So these are all 1 to 10, ten being the best and in color, light to dark.
So, while Augustiner brau has the best taste, Hacker-Pschorr is the over all winner with perfect quaffability (I had three litres in about two hours). Spaten just edged Augustiner for second, it is excellent as well. You can't go wrong with any of them. Russ and I spent all of last night at the Hofbrau tent and had a great time. It was was last one we had to try. For what its worth, when I've asked locals what the best beer is, they always say "Augustiner."
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