2013/10/19: Oktoberfest

“Canada’s Greatest Bavarian Festival”. Maybe the only one, but for sure the greatest one. Oktoberfest Kitchener. A must have seen? Probably not. Funny? Absolutely! We, a group of 12 exchange students from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Sweden, entered the train to London (one locomotive and two carriages, but of course with a mobile coffee seller) at Toronto’s Union Station and enjoyed the comfortable ride through an agricultural area. The city of Guelph, the last stop before Kitchener, looked a little bit French.



Kitchener is situated half way between Toronto and London. The surrounding cities are Waterloo, Cambridge, Paris, Petersburg, Baden and Mannheim. Otto Street, Weber Street, Schneider Creek and “H. Krug furniture” next to the railway station demonstrate that about 60% of Kitchener’s inhabitants have German predecessors. Kitchener used to be called “Berlin”, but during World War I, at a time when it was prudent to prove their patriotism, the German founders changed the name of the city.



As it had already started raining when we arrived in Kitchener, we walked directly to the Oktoberfest area. Which is not easy to locate, because the Festhallen are sprawled all over the city. There’s a little concentration of Schnitzel, Sausage and Oktoberfesthaus in the centre of the city. We entered the Oktoberfesthaus and ordered a flavoured water (they called it “beer”). And another one. And another one. And another one. Sitting on plastic chairs, drinking beer out of plastic cups. The Canadian way of Gemütlichkeit. At least the music was comparable to Munich: ein Prosit; Fliegerlied; zickezacke zickezacke hoi hoi hoi; we’re playing cowboy and first nation (our own translation, they sang it in German) and everything else you know from Oktoberfest, carnival and Après-ski. Our group got smaller, the Festhaus emptied more and more during the afternoon, but four of us stood until it had finally stopped raining. We moved to a café to meet the others again and after that to a nice pub, where we ordered another beer. And another one. Yes, we drank a lot of flavoured water. Yes, we had a lot of fun. Yes, Oktoberfest on plastic chairs is horrible.

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