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Paul Flynn on Oktoberfest: Go at least once, while you’re young enough, even if you don’t fancy the idea

You might come back a sausage munching, beer swilling, Heidi convert. It’s called living

Germans are famously industrious and the food traditionally has to sustain them, it’s deliberately calorific and comforting. Photograph: iStock

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Paul Flynn
Sun Nov 12 2023 - 06:00

I wanted to write something lofty and different for this magazine, big picture stuff that might leave you mesmerised by my intellect. But nothing came of it, just empty stares into an untended garden. I always revert to stories.

My wife has gone away for a girls’ weekend, it’s not something she does often enough in my opinion. She has child abandonment issues, always feeling guilty, as if she left them as infants on a stranger’s doorstep. Maybe she doesn’t trust me. There are many messages just to make sure the girls haven’t been mislaid somewhere. It’s proper separation anxiety. I think she even misses me a little, but that’s probably taking it too far.

I have a little gallivant lined up myself. In truth, I never like to be too far away from one, even if it is weeks away. Having a trip booked gives me something to look forward to, then I can start making one of my many, endless restaurant lists.

When you’re reading this, I’ll be back, hopefully unscathed, from Munich. I touched on this briefly a few weeks ago when I mentioned in another column that I had acquired “a sports injury” at Oktoberfest. Well I’m going over again to see if I can find my dignity; it must be there somewhere, under some table, in a puddle of beer.

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I’m even looking forward to the food. Last year it was firmly under the heading “necessary sustenance to ensure good behaviour”. However, I found myself loving the mountains of porky delights, crisp pork knuckles, sauerkraut and blood sausages throbbing with flavour. Viktualienmarkt, in the city centre, is a meat lover’s Disneyland, a gustatory nirvana for plump middle-aged men who, by the end of the trip, are the same colour as the sausages.

I can’t describe how inordinately happy a good market makes me. This one is different, it’s outside, with 140 traders. For more than 200 years it has been Munich’s historic marketplace, with stalls selling an endless choice of all things edible, foraged and man made. It hasn’t got the vim and vigour of a Spanish or Italian market, but Viktualienmarkt has a prosperous surety about it, an unsurprising orderliness that made me envious. I wanted this in Ireland. There was a notable absence of primary colours. It was all autumnal shades, as if the people had slipped into the tones of the abundant mushroom stall.

Across the square, I spotted my pal Garbo tucking into a pork knuckle and a stein of beer with gusto. It was not yet 11am, that’s why I love him. He blended in with a boisterous group of lederhosen clad, copious men. He embraced the occasion and was fully kitted out in all the regalia, complete with a feathered hat and check shirt. He was raring to go and as it turns out, so was I.

As we left the square for the vast clamour of the tent, I looked around and couldn’t help but think they missed a trick in this market. A defibrillator stand would do a bomb here, right beside the pork stall. I can’t believe no one ever thought of it.

The best part about going away, for me, is travelling with friends. I see people transform, whatever day to day burdens they have evaporate into laughter under foreign skies. I don’t think I could ever go anywhere alone, I’d be lonely. But I know not everybody has the choice.

Going to Munich is never really about the cuisine, but it just so happens that I loved it. Germans are famously industrious and the food traditionally had to sustain them, it’s deliberately calorific and comforting. However, I don’t want to misrepresent the facts and give the impression that the country is stuck in a gastronomic time warp. In the 2023 Michelin guide Germany has 334 starred restaurants, fourth behind France, Japan and Italy. But that’s not what I’m after, not this time.

The Oktoberfest tents are cavernous, you hear the crowd before you see them, the thrum slowly building as you enter. Then all of a sudden you are immersed in a riot of noise and colour. This is where it has been all along. My eyes at the market became muted, acclimatised to fawns, soft browns and olive corduroy. Now a sea of Heidi characters in kaleidoscopic dresses were on benches, swirling steins and swaying in unison to the music like golden happy fields of barley.

Waitresses pushed through the crowd with jaw dropping mountains of beer and long planks of piggy treats, defying physics and human endeavour. I could barely lift one of these things, I felt puny by comparison.

[ Oktoberfest: not everyone is happy behind the smiles and the beer ]

These women are the superhuman elites of the hospitality industry. Most of them were working at Oktoberfest for the month to pay their college fees. One later told us she expected to earn €20,000. She rock climbed in preparation for it. Of course you did, I thought, rooted in awe. But not rooted quite enough as it turned out.

Oktoberfest is very special. Go at least once, while you’re young enough, even if you don’t fancy the idea. You might come back a sausage munching, beer swilling, Heidi convert. It’s called living.

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