Fish Out of Water

Fish Out of Water

Oktoberfest is a festival that lasts 16 days and originated in Germany. Oktoberfest is one of Germany’s main holidays and biggest events. Germans are known for Oktoberfest. During Oktoberfest the main thing to do is to drink beer, especially Marzen. Oktoberfest is a huge party for people to celebrate, drink beer, and eat. It’s actually known as the biggest fair bringing millions of visitors to Germany every year. Oktoberfest is also held in many cities such as San Francisco and Campbell.

I decided to go to Oktoberfest in Campbell because I have heard so much about it and because I wanted to know what Germans did as a holiday. Right when I got there all I could smell was delicious food. Above every tent I could see smoke rising from the air. By this I knew there must be lots of cooking going on.

As I walked into the area, there were just tons of people everywhere. The
place was jammed packed. I figured out that all the tents had hot dogs, polish sausages, and sour kraut. Their polish sausages were about nine inches long. There were also tents of beer everywhere. People were lining up for hours just to get beer and they even had souvenir mugs that you could purchase with the beer.

I was expecting to see a lot of German people there but since Campbell is such a diverse place, all types of people were there. There was a little bit of every culture and background here, which is very different from the Oktoberfest in Germany which mainly consists of mostly German people.

As an observer from a Vietnamese background I didn’t feel out of place at all. I went to Oktoberfest because I wanted to celebrate how the Germans do and I wanted to see what their holiday is all about. I know what Vietnamese New Year is about so I wanted to see what another culture’s holiday could be like. So I drank beer and had a polish dog, which by the way was absolutely amazing, and I partied with all the people around me.