“What’s the Schützenfest?”
“It’s kind of like Mardi Gras,” Kevin answered.
I imagined an eclectic celebration that combined my idea of German culture—beer steins, sausage, and lederhosen—with brightly colored beads.
I assumed it was some sort of bastardized religious festival.
I was in Germany visiting my friend Oliver, and his friends Kevin and Daniel. After a few fairly placid weeks of summer in Europe, I was in need of action and adventure.
The solution: the Schützenfest.
Oliver explained that hundreds of years ago, small German cities were protected by marksmen. They began the Schützenfest to promote friendly competition, and the subsequent festival celebrated the winner, or the Schützenkönig.
The festival lives on, but now it’s more of a big, drunken celebration with some shooting games.
“So how is that like Mardi Gras, exactly?”
“Uh. It’s not.”
* * *
The short cab ride over to the festival involved an animated conversation between the driver and the other three people in the car, speaking in a language that sounded like complete gibberish to me. Through layers of gibberish, I could her one word repeated over and over: Schützenfest. Perhaps they were explaining the essential points of the celebration; traditional clothing, secret handshakes, mysterious food stands that everyone avoids; but I would never know. I just stared out the window. We could have been going anywhere. The nature of the site and celebration was completely unbeknownst to me until we arrived.
When the cab pulled over in front of a park it was already twilight, but I could see brightly-colored lights through the darkened trees. Walking along the path, Kevin kept trying to describe what lay ahead: bratwurst, schnitzel, game booths…but mostly beer. We emerged from the forest and I found myself in a strangely familiar environment. There were rides, games, and food, which reminded me of the New England churchyard carnivals I went to as a kid. With a new sense of confidence in my surroundings, I prepared for a night of stuffed animals and Ferris wheels. But we walked right past the spinning, neon-lit rides, and past the wide-eyed, fluffy embrace of poorly sewn critters.
I asked Oliver why we weren’t going on any of the rides. To my surprise, he told me that nobody went on the rides. Oh, of course. How silly of me. We were going to the party tent instead.
I began to think that perhaps this was a little bit less like the New England county fair I was accustomed to. Instead of testing our strength with a giant mallet on a rigged scale, we headed into a very large square circus tent. My eyes watered as I passed through the curtains of cigarette smoke, and I squinted to see bars lining the entire right side of the tent, as well as the back left corner. The center had at least a hundred picnic tables with red-checkered tablecloths littered with empty beer glasses, and an enthusiastic cover band occupied a stage at the front of the tent.
It could have been the dimmed lighting, the pitchers of Hefeweizen, or the crowds of red-faced and singing Germans, but in spite of the cigarette smoke, the tent glowed. I felt warm and welcome.
Kevin, Daniel, and Oliver ushered me over to the bar on the right and we each downed a very large shot glass filled dark beer and a German liquor called korn. (Yes, korn, just like the band, but unlike the band the ‘r’ is not facing backward. And unfortunately, I don’t know if that is where the band got its name from). To my surprise (and horror), a tiny shard of the shot glass broke off and cut my palette.
The simple act of drinking had evolved into a very awkward moment of panicked pantomiming and blood dribbling from the corner of my mouth.
The German barmaid didn’t appear too concerned, but offered me another shot as her own twisted sign of apologetic sympathy. I figured I should try to act as unphased as she clearly was. Mortified, but determined to seem like an adept American, I took the free drink with only mild reservation and a slightly bloodied smile.
By this point, I knew that I should throw my expectation of a lighthearted, sticky-sweet carnival out of the proverbial window. I had to break out of my naivety.
I was in Germany, and I should have expected that blood would be drawn.
* * *
The four of us sat down at one of the picnic tables with half-pint glasses of wheat beer. A German couple sat down next to us with a tray of twenty-one of those cursed shot glasses. I stared in wide-eyed disbelief, counting and recounting the glasses. Twenty-one glasses. Two people. I shook Daniel’s shoulder and pointed—indiscreetly—to the enormous tray of alcohol. Laughing, he pointed to the next table, where several other small groups of people were faced with the same thing. Oliver reassured me that the glasses were filled almost entirely with beer, and just a little bit of korn. The shots I had received were significantly stronger because he knew the barmaid personally. And as if the sheer volume of alcohol I was expected to consume wasn’t enough, there was a certain ritual with which everyone had to take these shots. Allow me to explain.
There were two traditional marksmen’s associations at the Schützenfest, and each team had a particular way to down a shot glass full of beer and korn (sort of like a secret handshake). The first association, which Oliver claims his alliance to, uses the pointer finger and thumb to make an “L” shape, like a gun. The shot is then balanced on the inside corner of the “L,” and the remaining fingers are used to support the bottom of the glass. After a good, long stare into the eyes of your drinking partner, throw it back. I’m not sure how people still managed to do this after consuming their tray of twenty-one shots, because it’s not the easiest thing to do in the first place.
The other association’s shot-taking strategy was much easier to master. Using the pinkie and thumb, drinkers would make their fist signal “hang-ten” Then take the shot glass between the two outer fingers—pinkie on the bottom and thumb along the rim. Repeat the death-stare and throw it back. I stuck to this strategy.
We sank deeper and deeper into the evening.
The cover band began to play a song in German and handed out big gold stars attached to sticks (think absurdly large magic wands). People danced and waved their magic wands while I looked on in bewilderment. Kevin explained that the band was playing a very popular song about a guy who names a star after a girl that he loves, hence the frantic shaking of cardboard stars on sticks. For some reason this explanation seemed completely ridiculous to me and induced a fit of violent giggling. Or maybe it was just because it was three in the morning and I had been drinking somewhat steadily since 10 p.m. Maybe it was time to go home.
After the song finished, I (with Kevin’s help) tried to convince a band member to let me keep one of the giant magic wands as a souvenir. At most concerts in the United States, if band members distribute some kind of token gift to a crowd, the audience members can expect to keep it (or at least leave it on the ground to be found or trampled upon). To my great disappointment, this band demanded that all of their magic wands be returned.
The four of us slowly made our way out of the warm, beer-scented tent. We climbed into a cab, loopy and starless. Daniel realized that it was the same cab driver that had taken us there earlier in the evening, inducing a downpour of energetic, incomprehensible babble. In a slow and hazy moment of recognition, it occurred to me that in a place like New York, this would never happen, let alone on the same night. There are over 12,000 taxicabs in New York City, and in my 18 years of living in the New York Metropolitan Area before moving to Santa Cruz, I had never had the same driver twice.
We headed back to Oliver’s house. I leaned back against the faded leather seat next to Kevin, thinking about taxicabs and Mardi Gras beads. I let the gibberish wash over me.
“Kevin.”
“Yes?”
“That wasn’t like Mardi Gras at all.”
