4 October (1928): Thomas Wolfe to Aline Bernstein | The American Reader

First time the American author visits the Oktoberfest in Munich ...
I think the description is still fitting for today ;)

A Bavarian band of forty pieces blares out horrible noise, and all the time hundreds of people who cannot find a seat go shuffling endlessly up and down and around the place. The noise is terrific, you can cut the air with a knife—and in these places you come to the heart of Germany, not the heart of its poets and scholars, but to its real heart. It is one enormous belly. They eat and drink and breathe themselves into a state of bestial stupefaction—the place becomes one howling, roaring beast, and when the band plays one of their drinking songs, they get up by tables all over the place, and stand on chairs, swaying back and forth with arms linked, in living rings. The effect of these heavy living circles in this great smoky hell of beer is uncanny—there is something supernatural about it. You feel that within these circles is somehow the magic, the essence of the race—the nature of the beast that makes him so different from the other beasts a few miles over the borders….

@Muse
#oktoberfest #history

https://theamericanreader.com/4-october-1928-thomas-wolfe-to-aline-bernstein/