Täglich Wiederkehrendes Abenteuer

This past weekend we went to Oktoberfest over in New Ulm with my parents. I forgot to bring my camera, so I don’t have any pictures. My mom didn’t forget to bring her camera, so she has pictures. She’s been sending them around to the family, so I figured I’d just steal that and use it as this blog post… under the guise of having my mom (Eltern V. around here) as a “guest blogger”.

Whether she likes it or not.

We went to New Ulm for Oktoberfest yesterday (Saturday). It is a German thing and was most interesting. It will not hurt a one of us to educate ourselves a bit on the culture/traditions of our German brothers and sisters… although, most of the time, I was amazed that these people could go and go and go some more! Whiskey must be more potent than beer, because we Irishpersons would have been under the table well before this group of people.

First we saw the Glockenspiel. (11:00am) I thought that word would be “clock” but Mary Jo says it means “ringing bells”. At certain times, that panel opens up and those figurines come up and go around as the bells chime out a song. The figurines depict things from New Ulm’s history like Indians, pioneers, and a guy drinking beer. At Christmastime, these figurines are replaced with the nativity scene. A sister city in Germany donated money for the largest bell $80,000 and Will/Mary Jo saw at least one of these Glockenspiels in Austria.

Then we saw the tail end of the parade. They had those witches/troll-looking things around all day. I think at Christmastime, at the German Christmas markets, these characters go around threatening little children that they have to be good otherwise one of these ugly characters with show up with coal for their Christmas stocking… or something… I don’t know why they were there, but that girl in the German dress is Miss New Ulm.

Then we stopped at a German cafe for your dinner of German potato salad, sauerkraut, a brat, and something else that looked like a brat… a lauizer or something. Next we stopped at a couple of interesting gift shops and bought some fudge.

Then we went around the corner and, in the street, there were all these tables lined up and just packed with people! And every last person had a cup of beer in their hand! The music, the dancing, old people, young people, women (2 & 3 at a time) polkaing with each other -these people were crazy! I was in awe of how these people could turn a perfectly innocent country/western song or 1060’s rock-n-roll tune into a German polka or waltz! But, as Will/Mary Jo pointed out “anytime you have an accordion, you have a wonderful German song”.
Then we took the horse-drawn trolley ride. It was mostly enjoyable because New Ulm has unbelievable old, 3-4 story brick homes that have been kept up. [and the main street still have the old brick buildings with the arched windows in the top]. The only disturbing thing was that you may have read about a fire at a New Ulm bed & breakfast about last May/June. The owner was killed along with her 2 teenage daughters and a couple staying there from Ks or NE or somewhere. One guy made it out alive. The trolley ride took us right past (uncomfortably close) to this 3 story, large home all blackened with the roof missing and the porch, where the fire started, hanging off the house. That put a damper in the ride. Then it was on to the Gag House!

Now, this is not to be pronounced “gag -as in throwing up” which I was doing. It kinda rhymes with “hog” or as the young folks pointed out, it is like Lady Gaga, but without the last “a”. The house was very interesting to look at. It was 3 stories with the father’s, Anton, art/photographic studio on the top floor. That round balcony comes out of the parents’ bedroom. It had a closet between 2 rooms just like that one between the girls’ room and Pat & Mick’s room @ John’s. The Gag family was 7 kids with Wanda being the oldest. So her father, herself, and the youngest sister all ended up as artists, musicians, and writers. This was like in the 1940’s. I became quite disturbed at the Gag House too because of what the tour guide was telling us. She said that the town-folk thought the Gag family was quite weird and odd because they were all so artsy and all. REALLY! How rude! To tell you the truth, I was thinking that in about the year 2040, the Hancock town-folk will be running tours, in conjunction with the 4th of July, saying “we all thought this family was weird because they painted, sang and played music, and sewed beautiful quilts”. WHAT! Boy, they don’t mind making bucks off the poor, old, weird Gag family now! Anyway, it almost made me want to get in my car and drive out of that town. But we went on to the Hermann Monument instead.

So way back in 9 A.D., this German guy named Hermann, which was not his real name, surprised the Romans in the Black Forest and killed a lot of them. Then they put up a monument in honor of him. So the New Ulm Sons of Hermann (not to be confused with the Sons of Norway) decided to put up a monument too. And they got money to fix it up from a bunch of people and then those people got to have a brick in the walkway.

As you can see, this thing is very high -see that girl standing out on that 2′ ledge up there under the statue? William and I carefully crawled up those open, metal, without an outside wall stairs to the window area. Anyway, we could see the colored leaves.

Then, and I don’t know why they did it, I think it was just to show off, but Eldon & Mary Jo climbed out on the roof/little ledge. I will have to say, though, that both of them were very nice to me and Will and both told us how proud they were of us to have made it that high and they both agreed to walk down right ahead of us which made me feel better. Then we went into the base of the monument which they called the Interpretive Center and looked at old stuff.

About 4 pm, we headed for the Brewery. Will was disturbed because it is billed as the 2nd oldest… US brewery… which is family owned… still in operation… and something else. He thought that was more adjectives than necessary to advertise the Brewery. Anyway, we walked up and looked (from the outside) at the old house August Schell build attached to the original brewery and also looked at (from the outside) the million dollar mansion his grandson build on the property. Then we saw a video about how to make beer. Then we saw a copper pot. Then they took us to the most important part of the tour -the beer tasting. We tasted 6 kinds of beer with Schell’s Light and Schell’s Oktoberfest being my personal favorites. Then we could have a large plastic cup of our favorite kind of beer, but we all took a cup of root beer instead.

Now remember, we were seeing many of the same people from the 11 am down-on-main-street drinking/dancing/eating event at the brewery and those people were still standing, walking, and driving motorcycles. Oh yeah, and there were peacocks and deer on the property. And I actually heard an advertisement for Schell’s beer on the radio during the Vikings game… which I do not want to talk about… the Vikings, not the advertisement.

So then we had to rush over to the Holiday Inn where we had our supper of brats, sauerkraut, something that looked and tasted like cut up egg noodles, and Eldon had chicken strips. At 7pm, we had the keg opening with a real German lady right from Germany “ok-ing” the tapped beer. She said something in German that nobody understood, but those Germans started lining up to get free beer out of the keg anyway. And here’s the thing… they drew beer from that keg until it was gone and the last person to get the beer won the beer shoe… I don’t know if that is the spelling, but it sounds like shoe. I did not/still don’t know what a beer shoe is so I will have to google that. We did not win the shoe.

As we ate, they had the Bockfest Boys playing German music and you guessed it, those now totally drunk Germans were dancing their hearts out and they were old… older than me and Eldon… and nobody was falling down or throwing up: not one person! How do they do it??
So then they had New Ulm’s own Concord Singers and that is why I wanted to go to Oktoberfest in the first place. They sang all songs in German and yes, they sang a song about a little Switzer Boy. And this group never stopped moving and the audience never stopped moving. Apparently, you are either swaying from side to side to slower music (preferably with a glass of beer in one hand) or clapping/waving arms to the faster music. And each and every song during the Bockfest Boys and Concord Singers found a long Conga line of people dancing around through the people, on the dance floor, etc. even during the singers’ performance. Nobody seemed to think those people ought to sit down. The Conga line was led by either Miss New Ulm, the alternate Miss New Ulm, or the New Ulm foreign exchange student from Germany who most likely thought the whole bunch was crazy. The leader had a big stick with sleigh bells attached and she would pound the stick on the floor to the beat. Also, if it were faster music, the line kind of marched/tramped along. If it were slower music, the line would turn shoulder to shoulder, grab hands, and step from side to side gradually moving one way. The troll-people had made their way from downtown to the Holiday Inn too and they would pick regular people out of the crowd to join the Conga line for each song. Old people, young people, kids and the kids were not crying and crabby. They were dancing along or on the dance floor trying to learn to polka. Well, it has been a long time since I have seen so many people having so much fun.

After the Concord singers, the young people were still at it but Eldon and I had to drag them out of there so we could go home. We had breakfast with the kids Sunday morning and then drove home. Thank you.

Images in “fun try to guess the order” order: a.k.a. random.