![]() ![]() the clowns, the Lederhosen-wearing children, the elderly beer drinkers wearing giant hot dog or chicken hats. We bought little felt hats and purchased pins to put on them. We ate and ate and drank and blissed out. The music - polkas, the chicken dances, accordion odes to beer and laughter - was suddenly beautiful. We devoured sauerkraut and potato cakes and pigs-in-a-blanket and bread pudding with hot yellow syrup from the New Braunfels Smokehouse. We drank Spaten draft beer, dark and sweet. We ate what had to be about a million sausages on a stick. There was the initial thrill of being served alcohol in a restaurant at the age of 13 (‘Can we eat out every night?') but no real understanding of the cuisine or the culture.įifteen years after I left Germany, my wife and I went to Wurstfest. We ate out in Germany only a few times that I can remember. We lived in an open military community housing area, but it was in some ways as American as if we'd never left Texas. That's not far, it turns out, from Braunfels, the place Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels left to lead a group of immigrants to Texas, where he founded New Braunfels.Īs an Air Force brat living overseas during the Gulf War, I mostly stayed close to home. More questions about Wurstfest, which is getting closer every minute.įrom 1988 to 1991, when I was a teenager, my family lived in Wiesbaden, Germany. ‘We just have a laid-back and acceptable place to have a beer and listen to music and have a good time.' ‘We don't have any pyrotechnics or lasers or flashing things,' Skoog says. There were about 125,000 attendees over 10 days at last year's Wurstfest. These days it's pork-chop-on-a-stick and something called ‘nuclear polka.'īut the fest itself, which comes together with the help of about 300 ‘OPA' volunteers and thousands of organization members who run concessions or sell items at the fest, is largely unchanged despite seeming to grow every year. For a while, corn on the cob was all the rage, and so was big-band polka. Skoog says that as the years pass, both musical styles at the fest and kinds of food change. Inside a giant hall are dozens of booths offering well more than 100 kinds of food, from bierbrats to fried Oreos to goulash, funnel cakes and potato cakes (with a side of applesauce and, hey, why not, a smoked sausage). A large tent with German music is one of the first things you see. When you walk through the entrance gates - which have been remodeled and widened for this year's 50th fest - you're walking alongside the bank of the Comal River. ‘We shifted the emphasis from the quantity of people to quality of people and to emphasize family participation.' ‘We were just overwhelmed because it got to be hard to control, so we started charging at the gates,' Skoog says. Skoog says that in the late '70s, the festival suffered from growing pains and that the decision to begin charging admission to the festival helped get things back under control. Wurstfest today features beer but is largely about the large variety of food booths, music that plays continuously for all 10 days on three separate stages, carnival rides and lots of German costumes and silly hats. He helped incorporate the sausage fest and has watched it evolve from a short-run German-style party to a 10-day event that now emphasizes family fun and community involvement. Skoog has been part of the festival since it began as ‘Sausage Day' in 1961. His office, in a Wurstfest building near the grounds where the event is held, is packed with file cabinets, all adorned with bumper stickers that say things like, ‘The older I get the better I was.' His office - home to Wurstfest beer steins that line a high shelf that goes along all four walls - looks as if, over the years, it's developed an additional layer made of paper and work folders. This is not Mocktoberfest.Īs ‘director of wurst relations,' Skoog is part of four-person staff that organizes Wurstfest year-round. ‘Rocktoberfest.' In fact, you won't find any ‘X + Oktoberfest' puns, including, ‘Socktoberfest,' ‘Jocktoberfest' or ‘Woktoberfest.' We consider all derivations unworthy of your attention. It turns out I'm well-suited to attending Wurstfest every year.Įvery year I try to contain myself, but it's very difficult when you believe you've found heaven on Earth.įive easy Wurstfest puns that will not be appearing in this story:Ĥ. ![]() It's a bit like being a boy in the 1950s and having the circus come to town and blow your mind - or like tasting really good barbecue for the first time. It's the way you feel when you fall in love or when you discover something you can do innately well. Something in the mess of my DNA was reacting to the scene around me, and a puzzle piece seemed to settle into place. The first time I went, five years ago, I felt a shift within me. Every year, around this time on the calendar, they hold Wurstfest, a '10 Day Salute To Sausage,' in New Braunfels, the town where I live. ![]()
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