The tent is not really new to him. After all, he was involved in planning it, and in great detail. “I actually know every room from the plan,” says Georg Heide. “And the Pletschacher tent construction company has already built a sample box and presented it to us.” Actually, Georg Heide, his wife Renate and his daughter Daniela should have moved into the new tent in 2020 for the first time. “I still remember that I said to the brewery manager Andreas Steinfatt, half for fun: A new tent can actually do with new landlords,” says Heide and laughs. “However, I was thinking more about my daughter and son-in-law.”
On-site appointment with Georg Heide in the new Bräurosl. The Heide family is one of the oldest Wiesn dynasties, the grandfather got the Bräurosl for the first time in 1936. After the war, things would continue in 1950 with the first real Oktoberfest of the post-war period. But then the warehouse with the tent burned down shortly before, and so the Heides were only at the start again in 1951. From then on, however, uninterrupted. Georg supported his father Willi from as early as 1967, when he was still attending hotel management school in Pasing.
In 2020 it was proud 53 years at the Wiesn. And actually it could have gone on like this for a while. But then came Corona and the cancellation of the Wiesn. The family council met. With a heavy heart, the Heides decided to withdraw from the Oktoberfest. In spring 2020 they announced their withdrawal. Some smiled sympathetically because Georg Heide said at the time that he expected the Wiesn to be canceled a second time. He should then be right, as we know today.
Now it’s another Oktoberfest, the 187th already, and Georg Heide is standing in the huge tent, in which only a few people can be found so shortly after opening at ten o’clock – mainly staff, someone comes by all the time, waiters or bartenders, for example , and happily greets the former boss. “It has become very bright, very light and high,” he says of the tent. “Very beautiful!”
In the tent, Heide is still warmly welcomed by his former employees, here by head bartender Vitus Spiral plow.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
As an innkeeper, you first and foremost make sure that the most important tool, i.e. the tent, is functional, that the staff can work well and that they are left alone during the breaks. New staff quarters are now upstairs, on the first floor, in the side rooms of the gallery. The service aisles at the music podium have become significantly wider, you can get to the other side, from the kitchen, faster if you have to go through with the heavy “sleds”, as the large trays with the food are called.
In general, the kitchen: when the brewery was planning the new tent, Heide had it designed by a specialist office together with his son-in-law, who himself trained as a cook. After all, it is one of the heart of the tent, it has to work. Just like the taverns. “We used to have two taverns that were really very small, cramped and dark,” says Heide. “They were real caves. It’s much, much better now.”
The fact that the ring line with the beer has now been moved from the ground to the first floor along the surrounding gallery also has its advantages. “Previously, it had to be thoroughly flushed and cleaned before it was put into operation, after a year it was left unused in the ground,” he explains, “of course that’s much easier now.”
“I’ve never experienced the first Oktoberfest Saturday so relaxed”
Once at the top, Heide says: “In the beginning I wasn’t quite so convinced by the surrounding gallery and the outside on the south side. But it’s already become nice, even if you look directly at the kitchen of the Löwenbrauzelt.” Practical in times of Corona: Guests sit outdoors and still have a roof over their heads. And the waitresses appreciate working outside in the non-reservable areas. “Of course there is a lot more change than in the boxes – if one goes, the next one is there.”
And, not a bit of melancholy that the new tent is now managed by Peter Reichert and no longer by him? “Not at all,” says Georg Heide, “I’m doing great with it!” After all, 16 days of Oktoberfest also means stress around the clock. And you get something out of it longer, even if it only has such strange effects as the one that you still hear brass band music, although none is playing: “Sometimes I still have two or three days after the last day when I’m at home on the couch rested, listened to the band,” says Heide and has to laugh.
Nevertheless, he was happy to come to the Oktoberfest opening in the tent. Of course, the brewery had invited its long-standing host, and he gets on really well with the new host anyway: “I’ve never experienced the first Oktoberfest Saturday so relaxed!”