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 Back
in 1970, a 17 year old Dowbrigade rolled into Munich with about as much
of a clue as a kumquat in a supermarket.
We were coming from Vienna,
where we had thoroughly trashed the up-scale apartment of a rich maternal
aunt who was in the states at the time. The place was on Einsteinstrasse,
in a swanky district of neat, well tended apartments and gardens. It
was the first time we had been on our own in a foreign city, with a
whole apartment at our disposal.
We dimly remember a party that went on for quite some
time, and a band of gypsies who sort of took up residence afterwards.
With no cooking experience at that point, we experimented. Our experiment
in
making french
fries,
which involved potatoes and boiling oil, was a disaster. Luckily,
we were able to put out the flames before the police or fire department
were called.
Shortly after the fried potato incident, we decided
we’d seen enough of Vienna, and headed for Munich on a whim. We
had a couple of hundred bucks, and a chunk of red Lebanese hashish the
size and shape of the two-inch heels on our Frye boots. We had never
heard of the Oktoberfest.
Our ignorance didn’t last long. In Munich, in the fall,
its hard to miss the Oktoberfest. Public drunkenness becomes dir rigueur
for three weeks. Although alcohol has never been near the top of our
list of substances of choice, our natural instinct is to fit in with
the local culture (undoubtedly a large part of our successful career
as an anthropologist), and we were soon well into the spirit of things.
On our first night in town, at a Beerhall on the Oktoberfest
grounds, we met Koch Blackmun, who introduced himself as Richie Haven’s congo player. We
were actually out back of one of the Oktoberfest Beerhall, a circus-tent like ale emporium, filled with hundreds of long tables and thousands of enthusiastically drunk tourists. We were taking a break, puffing on
our pipe, when a bald, beatnik-looking black guy stuck his head
around a corner, raised his eyebrows in a fake-innocent, quizzical gesture,
accompanied by a subtle double sniff, and said, "Whatcha got there, Ace?"
Koch was 15 years our senior, riding around Europe on
the money he made for Haven’s last album, and we hit it off immediately. After
the Oktoberfest, we traveled together for about a month, a Black beatnik
and a Jewish freak bombing around Bavaria on a vintage BMW. Plenty of
places wouldn’t serve us, but we didn’t much care. It was an education,
though.
The point being, we still have strong memories of the
Oktoberfest, and that period in our life. We aren’t alone. Aunt
Mary hasn’t spoken to us in 35 years. And every time we read a news story
about the Oktoberfest, our thoughts drift back…
 A gang of teenage boys who dressed as police officers
to body search female visitors to the Munich Beer Festival have been
arrested. The fake cops pretended they were looking for hidden weapons
as they ran their hands over the bodies of women they singled out.
But they were caught by the real cops after women complained about the
intimate searches. The three teenagers face charges of sexual assault,
indecency and impersonating a police officer.
from Ananova
And finally, to show our deep respect for German inventiveness
and engineering, this welcome development in drinking technology:
A beer mat that calls for a refill when the pint is
almost empty has been invented by scientists in Germany. The electronic
beer mat was created by computer scientists Andreas Butz of the University
of Munich and Michael Schmitz of Saarland University.
Beneath the cardboard surface is a small, flat baseplate which conceals
pressure and acceleration sensors that react to the weight of the glass
and the position and movement of the coasters. The microsensors then
pass on this information via radio link to the bar, where the signal
is picked
up and decoded by a waiting computer.
The customer can speed the order up by "flapping" the beer
mat, and can order more beers by using a stack of mats to express the
number of drinks ordered.
from Ananova
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