For the past two years, Dieter Reiter could easily have been called Mayor of October, he was asked so often whether there would be another Wiesn. How serious the times have become can be seen from the fact that nothing has been heard from him in this regard for about five days: radio silence! Only the chancellor is otherwise taciturn. And still no headline on the Munich newspaper boxes: “What’s next with the Wiesn: Does Dieter do Olaf now?” Is it possible that Munich has already lost interest in the Oktoberfest after a two-year break, and that newcomers don’t even know what it was like? “Theresienwiese? That’s where you can drive into the test tent, isn’t it?”
After all: In order to counteract the impending loss of history, a temporary pop-up memorial is currently being erected on the festival grounds. A (currently still) half a Ferris wheel is a reminder of 212 years of folk festival history. The whole thing is called “Spring Festival” – it is currently unclear whether anything else is happening there. In any case, it’s not comparable to the Oktoberfest, otherwise there would also be Oktoberfest landlords, a beer price debate and lots of other things that are good for creating clichés.
There used to be parades on the Theresienwiese that were not organized by lateral thinkers, but by people wearing traditional costumes and marksmen. Long ago. “All the others”, as the correct Bavarian term for this group of people is, but carry on. On Saturday, the traditional car parade gathered again on the Theresienwiese, around the slogan: “Vaccination is the red line!” to follow. Apparently, some motorists still live so far behind the moon that they didn’t even notice the failure of compulsory vaccination in the Bundestag. When the Oktoberfest comes, however, they lose their starting place on Matthias-Pschorr-Straße. But if the autumn wave comes and the Oktoberfest has to be canceled, they could perhaps start from Wirtsbudenstraße, between empty beer tents. That would be symbolic!