Now that both the Oktoberfest and the Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany’s most beautiful musical experiences, have come to an end this week, a whole new feeling of inner emptiness is rampant in Munich and throughout Bavaria. The question that everyone is now asking: Where to put the funny costumes, with the unconditional desire for collective intoxication? Who or what redeems us now that Jesus has cut off his hair and the last beery “Angels” has faded away? And above all: where to go with the released energy?
Of course, it would be practical if that energy could be converted directly into heat for overpriced old Munich apartments, but even the capable Bavarians are still a few decades away from technical development.
Find out about the Berlin rappers from KIZ outraging people who make fun of Oktoberfest in a song might be a nice idea. The band had, they wrote picture this week, “our Wiesn” presented as a “drunk-coke-puke-rape-aria”. The accompanying music video with film snippets of people bottomless and drunken attempts at copulation at the Oktoberfest was deleted from YouTube, but more because of the pornographic content, not because of the attack on “our Oktoberfest”. Outrage is always an option, not just for them picture, albeit a bit small-minded and not very time-consuming. Especially since KIZ might, for once, be a little bit right with their observations.
So here are a few other practical and pointless suggestions for investing the time until Advent: Blow around with leaf blowers. Hide from Corona at home. Or run the Munich marathon backwards, as a moderator from a Munich private radio station plans to do at the weekend, a so-called “challenge”. Quote from the moderator: “Running backwards is a completely different thing. You have to look back all the time.” Absolutely correct.
All of these are legitimate activities. Please don’t put the released energy into preparing, hollowing out, arranging or photographing pumpkins of all kinds. Because pumpkins, it has to be said at this point, are really the very last thing. This uselessness piled up in orange heaps, this penetrance in front gardens and shop windows. The pumpkin is the terrifying fuss made just to keep people occupied somehow until Halloween. Pumpkins, once hollowed out, are moldy after five days anyway. The insignificance of taste, alas, is the smallest problem. So please: don’t fall for it.