Big Walnut High School holds annual Oktoberfest sans bier

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

It might be shorter than its Ger­man coun­ter­part, and there’s no bier, but Big Wal­nut High School Ger­man lan­guage stu­dents cel­e­brate Okto­ber­fest with the same level of enthu­si­asm as res­i­dents of München.

Okto­ber­fest is a 16-day fes­ti­val held each year in Munich, Ger­many dur­ing late Sep­tem­ber and early Octo­ber. It is one of the most famous events in the city and the world’s largest fair, with some six mil­lion peo­ple attend­ing every year.

Beer plays a cen­tral role in the Ger­man ver­sion of Okto­ber­fest, with every fes­ti­val begin­ning with a keg of beer tapped by the Mayor of Munich who declares “O’zapft is!” — Bavar­ian for: “The beer is tapped!” The first one-liter-tankard of bier is then served to the Bavar­ian Prime Minister

A spe­cial Okto­ber­fest beer is brewed for the occa­sion, which is slightly darker and stronger in both taste and alco­hol. Only local Munich brew­eries are allowed to serve this beer in a Bierzelt, a beer tent that is large enough for thousands.

Okto­ber­fest is known as the Largest People’s Fair in the World, with 72 per­cent of the peo­ple com­ing from Bavaria and 15 per­cent of vis­i­tors com­ing from for­eign coun­tries like the sur­round­ing Euro­pean Union coun­tries and other non-European coun­tries includ­ing the United States, Japan, Brazil and Australia.

Okto­ber­fest num­bers are impres­sive. 12,000 peo­ple are employed at the Okto­ber­fest. Of these, 1,600 are wait­resses (a.k.a Bar­maids). There is seat­ing avail­able for 100,000 peo­ple. Dur­ing a typ­i­cal Ger­man Okto­ber­fest 102 whole oxen are roasted, 439,000 sausages are con­sumed, and 460,000 roast chick­ens are sold.

One sta­tis­tic of note, 60 per­cent of Okto­ber­fest vis­i­tors arrive by pub­lic trans­port. There are no sta­tis­tics avail­able indi­cat­ing how the other 40 per­cent get home after a day in the bier tents.

Accord­ing to Big Wal­nut High School Ger­man lan­guage teacher Frau Geor­gia Craig, Okto­ber­fest might be com­pared to the Ohio State Fair … except take away the live­stock and add much more beer.

For their annual one-day Okto­ber­fest on Octo­ber 29 Big Wal­nut High School Ger­man Lan­guage stu­dents brought in Ger­man desserts, Ger­man Club pro­vided brats and sauer­kraut – which were con­sumed with­out bier.

“We use Okto­ber­fest as a cel­e­bra­tion of our Octo­ber stud­ies; a cel­e­bra­tion of all their hard work,” Frau Craig said. “Dif­fer­ent grade lev­els had dif­fer­ent themes.”

Ger­man I stu­dents did projects based on Reuni­fi­ca­tion, German-American Her­itage and Okto­ber­fest. Ger­man II stu­dents stud­ied famous Ger­man Amer­i­cans. Ger­man III Hon­ors stud­ied and cre­ated their own Penn­syl­va­nia Dutch Barn Signs.

“AP Ger­man lan­guage stu­dents did power point pre­sen­ta­tions on var­i­ous top­ics like the Ger­man school sys­tem, reli­gion, pol­i­tics and hol­i­days,” Frau Crag said. “Each class got to choose a movie to watch — For­rest Gump, Lord of the Rings and Glad­i­a­tor were pop­u­lar this year.”

Frau Craig noted that the movies were dubbed over in the Ger­man lan­guage. She pur­chases them from Ger­many via the Inter­net, and some­times buys movies dur­ing sum­mer vis­its to Deutschland.

Frau Craig said the Ger­man lan­guage stu­dents’ Hol­i­day Canned Food Drive to help stock shelves at Big Wal­nut Friends Who Share is on the hori­zon; and Ger­man lan­guage stu­dents will be car­ol­ing dur­ing Christ­mas on the Square and in neigh­bor­hoods near the high school.

Posted by Gary Henery on Nov 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.