Oktoberfest 2008

I had been looking forward to ChCh's version of Oktoberfest for a while now.  Today Bret and I had the opportunity to attend Oktoberfest in Sol Square, the private little cove of restaurants and bars that we had stumbled upon during a previous downtown outing.  We purchased our tickets in advance, and were excited that the $20 each included a free stein and first beer.  Now, being from a German background, having attended other Oktoberfest-ivities, and making multiple trips to the Huber Haus for 'bier and boots', perhaps my expectations were a little high.  But I was craving a bratwurst and a pretzel, and that would have made me happy enough.

We got down to Sol Square, an hour into the celebration, thinking we would find the place crawling with people listening and dancing to the Oom-pah band.  However, there were hardly any people in attendance, and the weather was chilly.  Already, I was questioning where the party was at.  We presented our tickets and entered the first restaurant to redeem our free beverage.  To my disappointment, there was only one German beer!  The rest were NZ originals, likely comparable to their Budweiser.  We shrugged it off, and we settled into a warm corner of the restaurant, waiting for the place to fill up.  Bret and I kept talking about how we were probably the most German people there.  The Oom-pah band started, and the man leading the band was cursing and almost mocking the whole festival.  And there were far to many barmaids wearing Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz costumes in substitute for traditional German garb.  Lastly, there were no bratwurst!  We left within an hour...

I was mostly disappointed because we had really grown excited for the traditional celebration.  However, it felt insulting, and boring.  We made it home right as the rain started coming down, and settled in for a quiet night.  Oh well...it's Labour Day weekend, so no work on Monday.  So today wasn't an entire waste!