Remembering Charlie Mops

I arrived in Munich on a night train from Paris a little after dawn on Saturday October 3rd. It had been a sleepless night, largely, as it was very cold in the cabin and I had stayed up late in the night speaking with Josef, an architect from Tours, and Paul a dairy farmer from Wisconsin on semester abroad working in genetics. Later we were joined Mehud from India, a Doctor. It was good company and the conversation ranged far from politics, sports, accents, culture, I drank deeply from it as engaging talk had not been common thus far.

Autumn is taking Germany, surely, and the window in our cabin did not keep the chill away. When my eyes opened I found that my arms were folded into my shirt and I was fetal against the wall. No one felt rested and everyone was aware of possible rigors to come that evening. My hotel would not be ready for some hours, as was the case with Paul, and Josef stuck with us for a few hours and we sat in the Munich station and watched the refugees from last nights revels stagger in, and the fresh meat stride out. Train stations in Europe, the large ones anyway, have a shopping mall feel to them. The food that is quality array of local fare, there are clothing shops, markets, and every place you look to sit there is often someone already there. They are hugging their bags, or shushing a child, or staring into space and slowly rocking back and forth. They are all subconciously keeping time, waiting to get on the train, and on with their lives.

Munich's Hauptbahnhof was especially festive, as you can well imagine. The table next to us was populated by a friendly couple from Halifax, and then two enormous and strapping German men in shorts held by suspenders and matching green hats, they were wolfing down two sandwiches each. When I asked them how they were doing today the larger of the two, with a wide and straight grin said and a deep resonant voice: "SHHHTABLE."

After they met friends they were off, and replaced by a ragged Croatian. His hair was slimy, and he smelled like the night before. He was nursing a beer from a bottle and he had lost his sense of personal space. The only English words he knew were "Big, Obama, and Bush". He was very physical, hugging, slapping, and bumping fists. His stale breath and rank armpits settled in a cloud around us, and it lingered with the sudden awkwardness and then ultimately, menace. Josef has the appearance of physical delicacy, he is thin, with long curly poet's hair. Nothing in his demeanor or appearance would give pause to an overbearing drunkard blowing in from the cold morning. The drunk slapped at Josef's face, and laughed, it was hard to tell if he was trying to provoke or if his self awareness had evaporated. I felt myself tense, and I brought my shoulders back and chest out like on a nature show -- "Watch now as the American traveller feels threatened, his eyes widen, and his chest sticks out to show potential enemies his size and strength." -- I told the man to stop. He laughed and did some sort of weird tai chi dance and spoke in broken English and Slavik, I think he was talking about being in the Serbian war. He went to his knees and bent all the way back, nearly touching his spine on the ground. He waved at me from this position and then clumisly got to his feet, grabbed my hand, kissed it, and was on his way.

Josef was shaken and ashamed of it. He told me a story of when his car was rear ended by a Gypsy in a stolen automobile in Paris, and when they got out of the car the gypsy had badly beaten him, unprovoked and viciously. He said that all confrontations that might end in violence always made him severly anxious as a result. The drunkard had broken our momentum, and the conversation slowly died as each of us tried to dissect the whole incident and ponder on what it all meant. Josef left to meet his friends and Paul and I went to our separate accomodations.

The grounds for the fesitval are very near the station. And when I arrived there I was surprised at the modernity f it. Back home in Cincinnati Oktoberfest is more quaint, there was no polka music here in Munich. Rather the flashing lights of the amusement park rides play techno, or top 40 pop. The rides were all painted gaudily, one I particularly remember was painted as a movie poster from the Matrix, and also the Fifth Element. Away from the tents, there are the aforementioned rides, and of course a massive amount of stalls for food, sausage, fish, pork sandwiches, spiced nuts, and as you make your way the scents change. In fact the entire atmosphere assaults you on all sensual fronts. One of the stalls sold skewers of fresh fruit dipped in chocolate. Only the best chocolate I have ever had in my entire life by far. In the great middle of the grounds, you see very few people who are drinking or drunk. It is the in between space for those taking it slow, or meeting up, on the far north there is a grassy hill where there is no space for all the people laying down and resting. The signs of fatigue are everywhere, one of the first people I saw was a man sobbing uncontrollably at his girlfriend who was clearly massively pissed at him. There were four or five people with hand injuries, and I saw another with the pink stains of washed blood down his shirt and a swollen nose. I thought of the drunkard from this morning, and I thought of the underside of too much joy.

Finally, dotted amongst everywhere else are the tents. Each brewhouse has its own, and the elite crowd for each is specialized. Typical revellers just go where the line is shortest, or where they happen to be near when they want a drink. Getting into the tents at peak hours is a trick akin to getting into exclusive nightclubs, you can gladhand or bribe the guard, or arrive mid morning and keep your spot for twelve or thirteen hours. Constantly people are standing on the tables and they are singing and screaming and pointing at one another. The first song I heard sung by the crowd was not an old Bavarian folk song, but rather "Knockin' On Heaven's Door." The baseline from the White Stripes' 7 Nation Army is apparently the unnofficial motif of the entire affair. If you start the first bar of the music, everyone in earshot will join in, and then they will prost you an ask you where you are from.

I don't know what tent the currents led me to, I knew at the start but now I do not. I was taking a picture when I was grabbed by a group of Englishmen. One of them made me take a gulp of his stein, they asked my name, my nationality, what I was doing there. From that point my evening was a dizzying fog of faces and names and points on maps. Imagine my night as an ornately painted vase, and then thrown from the 6th story window of my hotel room. I can pick up any piece and remember something, but I can't ever put it back together. My constant companions from the night were an Englishman from Nottingham that we called Locksley, a German couple who had stein sized plastic breasts they made everyone put over their beer at some point, a heavy metal loving man from Frankfurt who I had three aggregate hours of conversation with and never got his name, and then later Alex a local nurse, and Sussanah who was in town from Salzburg where she studied tourism management.

Locksley was fond of telling everyone I was a writer from America, and by the end of the night girls would sidle up to me and ask me the name of my television show. It was like some odd, beer fueled version of the telephone game you played when you were small. Everyone whispers a message to eachother and at the end you see how it got skewed. All information seemed to flow that way outside of and inside the tent. As the night wore on, security would breeeze by, one man holding each arm of the person being removed. They would take the offending lush and push him out in the path away from the tent and then leave. If the drunk was bold, he could come straight back, and many did.

By the end of the night my name was "America". I was standing on a table with two Brazillians and a Kiwi and we were singing the Ballad of Charlie Mopps as I had taught them. Sussanah was trying to get me to come down, pulling at my hand and when I finally obliged I twisted my ankle and came down like a ton of bricks. It was an injury that wouldn't hurt until morning, I was sure, and so Locksley bought me another mug and gave me a 7 out of 10. Saying I lost massive points for the botched dismount. Everything happening around me was going super fast in some places, and slow motion in others. The beer is strong, of course, and my German friends were gratified to hear me call Miller and Bud "bullshit". At the end I was forced to produce my pen and I left with scrawled mobile numbers and email addresses on the paper I had written my train instructions upon.

I woke up face down in my hotel bed. My laptop was playing an episode of Deadwood in loop. A maid was banging on the door. It was my birthday.

The 1st verse lyrics to the Ballad of Charley Mops

A long time ago

Way back in history

When alls we had to drink was nuthin but cup of tea

Along came a man by the name of Charley Mops

And he invented a wonderful drink and he made it outta hops

He musta been an Admiral, A Sultan or a King

And to his praises we shall always sing

Lookit what he done for us

Hes filled us up with cheer

Lord bless Charlie Mops

The man who invented

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