Dave at the Oktoberfest.

David returns from Oktoberfest with an accordion under his arm and the first few hairs of a mustache under his nose, lederhosen in his suitcase and THE hangover thundering inside the alcohol bombarded brain of his. It is easy to say that something has changed in David’s personality. It’s probably the ompa-ompa music that has gotten into his nerves system or it has reprogrammed his brainwaves. Anyhow, Dave is no longer Dave, now he is more like… Fritz or Heinrich or Wilhelm, something like that. It’s like a German clone has returned from Bayern, and the Yankee guy we knew was kidnapped and buried somewhere along the autobahn, under six feet of concrete like a post-war secret hushed down from the heights of the Nazi-era.

Big breasted women yodeling and serving to much beer, throwing Bratwurst and Frankfurters on your table, grilled swine in all its glory; Pork Knuckle, Pork Roast, Wiener Schnitzel and Nürnberger Roastbratwurst, Kasseler Rippchen and Mettwurst. A diet queen would die of instant fat poisoning within thirty minutes of devouring this bonanza of food and alcohol. And who wouldn’t love this? Fat food and rivers of beer, a social gathering fit for a last offering before leaving earth and ascending upon heaven. After Oktoberfest you can die happily and end life with the blast of a German Luger. Go out with a bang, enter the Pearly Gates with the ringing still in your ears. Man, what would St Peter say? What would God say to this massive gluttony, Capital Sin number 3. I’d say he’d have a case of sin number 6; Envy. Or more probably he would transform into a fat German guy and participate, cramming down as many sausages and Giant Mugs of beer as possible. I gotta say I’d like to be Gods sidekick or chaperon that day. A priest wouldn’t do any good on that event. No no, send in the little devils, the demons of gluttony, the fellas responsible for all the obese mountains of human fat walking around the streets of America. Or better, send those fat fuckers in with God at the Oktoberfest and cheat the clergy of the experience.

On David’s return to work after the somewhat special trip to Germany, we observe a huge change in his behavior. Not only is his dialect a new kind of sound, it is also the sound of trying too much at the same time as it gives the impression of being authentic. We have no idea how he pulls this off but when you hear him speak at first you think it sounds fake. Then your brain shifts and make you believe this it actually how a Bayern immigrant would speak. But nature has its tricks and David is definitely pulled out of the magic-sleeve. And David now has a new taste in music, and it pollutes our ears like toxic waste. His desk is filled with stacks and stacks of German ompa music, blasting out of his green and yellow Skullcandy Ti Stereo Headphones. Somehow the music and the headphones do not match at all, it seems wrong in every way. But this is the new Dave, the new man returning for the German Sodom, not so much Gomorrah, and the metamorphosis has left us all baffled, dumbstruck and flabbergasted. When a college comes home as a completely new person, like a computer with a new, strange software, you do feel a bit like the Twilight Zone has hit town.

But Oktoberfest may not be such a bad place. It sure looks like a hell of a lot of fun, like an event you should go to at least once in your life. Why not? It’s food, drink, happy people and maybe some yodeling. A friend sent me a song over Spotify by this Japanese guy named Takeo Ischi, Der Japanische Jodler. If you can get this kind of combination, or alienation, by going to Oktoberfest it must be some powerful shit they got down there. I’ll put this Bayern gathering on my bucket list and go down there when my prostate starts to grow, when my hair is all white, my face is covered in wrinkles, when bushes of hair sticks out of my ears and my eyebrows are like one huge rain gutter and making my face a strange or funny thing. I’ll go there someday, in the great mist of the future. I’ll drink gallons of beer, eat Bratwursts and Frankfurters, Pork Knuckle, Pork Roast, Wiener Schnitzel and Nürnberger Roastbratwurst, Kesseler Rippchen and Mettwurst, with Rotkraut and Kartoffelpuffer on the side, have a bowl of Leberknödel Suppe and drown myself in German milkmaids, I’ll wear lederhosen all week and roll into a river to end my days as happy as an old man can be. Then it will be farewell world and Hello God, how was your trip to Oktoberfest? And he’ll answer; It was just like heaven. Sorry for not believing in you when I was alive. And He’ll answer; That’s OK my son, have a nice journey to hell. Whatta bummer that will be after Oktoberfest.