The Oktoberfest is finally over, and despite a clearly valiant effort, the guy we’ve all been following has reportedly failed in his beery suicide mission.
Everyone, I think, secretly hates the Wiesn (as the Bavarians call the fest) – you go along to the largely outdoor event just as the days are getting colder, and you spend too much, drink too much, eat badly, and barely sleep for two weeks.
Then there are always one or two chaps that take things that bit further, as if it wasn’t already strenuous enough. I reported on the attempt by one such chap a couple of weeks ago. He planned to drink 100 Maß (100 one-litre beers) this year.
Actually, he made a bloody good go of it – at the last official count, he’d guzzled (or, perhaps, forced down) 72 Maß in 15 days, and he was pretty confident of striding over the 80-Maß line by the end of day 16. Hats off to him, and I hope we’ll all be routing for him again next time round.
Gracious in defeat, Jon took time to applaud the heroic efforts of one Georg Mayrhofer, a native of Vienna, Austria, who has been at almost every day of the Wiesn for the past 27 years. All that practice has, as you’d imagine, bumped up his two-week intake quite considerably: According to an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, he once managed to put away 111 Maß (the all-time Oktoberfest record), probably without even really having to try.
Mayrhofer compares his own efforts to those of a triathlete, and describes the effect of his exertions quite honestly: “Das mag der Körper ja eigentlich auch nicht.” (“My body really doesn’t like it either.”)
I think that quite neatly sums it up for this year. My body didn’t like it, and I’m damn sure Jon’s didn’t.
Posted on October 5, 2010
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