The entry stamp on my hand should have already given it away: it came in the form of a small red dachshund. It took me a while, though, during this first visit ever to a Portland Oktoberfest (or any Oktoberfest for that matter) to figure out that they had actual Wiener races as one of the main attractions of the whole event.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wieners wherever you looked.  Although it was hard to focus on those elongated creatures given the many distractions in your line of sight.  The dirndls, the lederhosen, the hats.

 

 

 

 

Just in case you didn’t come adequately attired you could also spend hundreds of dollars to spiff up right then and there.

 

Then again, most people seemed to be inclined to spend the same amount of money on beer.  Which is, after all, what Oktoberfests are famous for.

 

 

 

It all started in Munich in 1810 as a celebration of one or another of the Ludwigs’ wedding. And seemingly hasn’t stopped since.  Citizens were invited to the meadows outside of the city to toast their crown prince or whatever he was and beer ran freely. Soon they added horse races to the annual event, then fun parks, the works. I looked at the official website for this year and counted 14 large beer tents or halls, and many more small ones. The festivities see an average 7 million visitors each year, with an estimated 6.9 million liters beer served. Hard to match in PDX, although we try.

Munich above, PDX below.

https://www.muenchen.de/int/en/events/oktoberfest/history.html

Somehow the Oktoberfest conquered the world. Even Hamburg, where reserved Northern Germans often wrinkled their noses at the thought of Bavarian debauchery, now celebrates the occasion with a slogan “Feiern wie die Bayern” – partying like the Bavarians.

(Can’t help but link to my favorite mention of beer, ever, in Willow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5XOYhG6Kgs)

And this year the Munich Oktoberfest is also the grounds for a psychological science experiment: so-called super recognizers, police personell that has unusual powers of observation, will be placed at the entrances of the Wiesn and in the large beerhalls to see if they can spot certain pre-defined perps. The story of the super recognizers is a fascinating one, they can correctly identify faces even when disguised, aged, altered within many contexts. In Munich they selected 37 out of 5300 applicants for the study for further evaluation. More on that during a blog week on psychology, but here is a link that gives an overview.

https://www.associationofsuperrecognisers.org/associate-news/munich-police-recruiting-srs

Well, in Portland, we rather race Wieners.

And my first encounter with this riveting activity consisted of a quartet of Dackeln three of whom hung out at the starting line after the race was on, confused and wonderingly looking at each other, then wobbling in circles, while the fourth one shot the 300 yards to the finish line in anticipation of a tasty snack that mom waved in the air.

 

I think it was the only minute during this last week of Kavanaugh horror show that I actually remembered how to laugh.