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What is OktoberFest Zinzinnati? Dachshunds  wearing buns and mustard running like little confused four legged hot dogs

Thousands  of perfectly sane adults clacking their hands, flapping their arms and jiggling their butts to a band playing the Chicken Dance Song, Wooden beer barrels rolling down Race Street and Beer Stein races;  as if that’s not enough add over 100 vendors selling all manner of items from attire to food and drink.

At Oktoberfest one could buy a wiener-dog or chicken hat, partake of any of the local brews and fill their bellies with bratwurst and kraut, schnitzels and Strudels or Cincinnati’s’ very own Goetta, served in unholy combinations, such as Goetta tacos and Goetta-Mac.  All this and much more makeup this one crazy event that takes place in a three block square of downtown Cincinnati every year in late September.  This year’s festivities saw record attendance with estimates as high as 650,000 people  converging on Cincinnati for the three day event.  The hoards, many sporting Alpine, chicken, or wiener-dog hats, lederhosen or German barmaid dresses, were all trying to navigate through the press of humans, while eating bratwurst smothered in kraut and tipping  their $12 plastic steins, stopping along their way to enjoy the live entertainment, available at nine different venues simultaneously.

Our visit to Oktoberfest, should have been much more fun than it actually was.  The heat and crowds, eating and walking and drinking and talking all at the same time, did not go well for me. I ended up with warm beer sloshed on my arm and mustard and kraut down the front of my top. We seemed unable to find a place to sit and much of our time was spent moving toward the row of port-a-potties, which forever seemed to be on the opposite side of where ever we were. Add to that our efforts at trying to hook up with some other family members who were in from out of town via text messaging. You get the picture.

But despite all my whining, we did manage to enjoy ourselves. And before we headed home, we had the pleasure of listening to one of the bands.  But our normal reaction to a live performance of the Door’s Road House Blues and Light My Fire, were overtaken by fits of beer induced mirth.  Myself and two of my sisters could not stop laughing at what we were witnessing; an Oompah’ Band, attired in lederhosen and sporting Alpine hats, complete with an accordion player and a man clicking spoons along the ridges of a washboard, belting out “Come on baby light my fire, Come on baby light my fire, tyrin to set the night on f…i…r…e!”    seemed so wrong on so many levels. 

   We laughed all the way across the Roebling Bridge as we walked back to Kentucky and our car.   “Only in Zinzinnati”, I thought.