Grisinagott!
Now that autumn has well and truly arrived, we can celebrate the Oktoberfest! This year it’s a pretty significant date, as the Wies’n celebrates its 200th anniversary.
For those of you who can’t make it to Munich – one of the North East’s pubs has embraced our Bavarian festivities and maybe you want to join us on Thursday, 14 October from 6pm onwards at the Brandling Villa in Gosforth. Please let me know who wants to come so that we can reserve a table. On their beer menu you can find many local beers, but also Erdinger Dunkel, Köstritzer Schwarzbier and Schneider Weisse. The food bar will offer typical Oktoberfest dishes such as Hendl (grilled chicken), Schweinebraten (roast pork), Brezel (Pretzels), Knödel (potato dumplings), Bratwurst and Currywurst. For further information on the Brandling Villa, its Oktoberfest (14 – 16 October), directions and the menu, click here.
The Hilton in Gateshead, who hosted last year’s Oktoberfest, have a typical menu again up until 7 October. There you can get dishes such as Kartoffelsuppe (potato soup), Aufschnittsplatte (selection of meats/chees), Matjesfilet Hausfrauenart (herring with apples and cream), Schweineschnitzel mit Kartoffelsalat (pork cutlet and potatoe salad), Hähnchen “Cordon Bleu” mit Bratkartoffeln und roten Zwiebeln (chicken cordon bleu with roast potatoes and onions) sowie Bratwurst und Sauerkraut (grilled sausage and sauerkraut). And if you still have space for desert, there’s a choice of Zwetschenkuchen (plum cake), Apfeltorte (apple gateau) and Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (blackforest gateau).
And if that has not satisfied your appetite, you can always head north to Glasgow, where the WEST Brewery and Bar run an Oktoberfest all through the month. They are even brewing their very own OktoberWEST and have the WEST Oompah Band playing live every Friday from 7.30pm onwards – www.westbeer.com.
Being a typical Munich event, I thought maybe you want to brush up on your language skills? The Oktoberfest site provides you with a lot of information about the event, the history and also the language: http://www.oktoberfest.de/de/navitem/Gaudi/. The online dictionary can also be downloaded as an app and you might also check out the Stern video about the best apps for the Wies’n.
If you want to work on your pronunciation, you might want also to listen to a real Bavarian band – the Spider Murphy Gang, who in the 80s were super successful. Another great programme promoting the Bavarian language was the 10-part series Monaco Franze, which played in Munich. If you can remember this fab programme and are feeling nostalgic, there are quite a few clips on YouTube and there’s even a very entertaining fan page on Facebook. Here’s one where Monaco Franze shows you how to drive a civil servant around the bend – click here.
Civil servants and food leads to another story that recently made the news in Germany – and hopefully both the Hilton and the Brandling Villa take note as it’s all about Schnitzels. A restaurant owner got into trouble with the tax man as he sold disproportionately large Schnitzels to his very hungry guests in Saxony. To read the full story on Reuters, click here.
However, some civil servants do have a sense of humour and Swiss Bundesrat Merz showed this when delivering a speech on a new EU law re a specific Swiss meat and ‘slightly’ lost his composure in the process. His ‘speech’ has now become a YouTube hit – click here.
Anyway, I hope you’re all in good spirits and we see many of you at our October meeting on 14th at the Brandling Villa.
Tschüß
Manuela
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