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Germany’s Oktoberfest, the world’s largest folk festival, where revelers from all over the world gather to swig large quantities of beer, has been canceled due to the coronavirus crisis https://t.co/GFHFVFmVan
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 21, 2020
Don’t be sad because it’s cancelled, be happy because you went once and puked in the sink of the home that your dad’s business partner’s daughter generously let you stay in. That’s where I’m at now: whenever another big world event that I’ve attended gets cancelled, I think about the good times. I think Oktoberfest would have wanted me to remember it that way—the pea soup fog of second-hand smoke swirling to the rafters, the passed out Dutch guy using a toilet seat as a pillow, the paramedics stretchering away an Italian girl whose face is a sheet of blood from the header she took off the pretzel stand… those are the memories we should celebrate.
How about Reuters calling Oktoberfest “the world’s largest folk festival?” That’s like calling Burning Man the world’s largest s’more tasting. Yes, s’mores are undoubtedly tasted at Burning Man. But that’s not even the second or third most common answer on our Family Feud board of “reasons to go to Burning Man.”
Here’s to Oktoberfest 2021. Hopefully.