Zwo Bier
Now that I have recovered from the Kirchtag celebrations I thought I would take one more post to mention a few more thoughts about the festival. Before it started all of the locals and the expats who’ve been here a while kept warning us that it would be crazy and we would just want to get out of town. I think they underestimated us, because we had a great time and weren’t really to0 bothered by the crowds and the noise. Of course, we were participating in and contributing to the crowds and the noise, so I guess I didn’t mind it.
The local newspaper estimated that there were over 400K people visiting for the festival last week. That’s pretty amazing considering there are only about 60K people who live in the whole town. Even more amazing is the organization of event. Even after the big parties on Thursday and Friday nights, the streets were swept and completely cleaned up by morning. On Saturday night around 3AM a big line of about 10 trucks waited at the end of our street. As soon as the last band stopped playing, they pulled in and started taking down the tents and packing up the tables and benches. By Monday morning, it was hard to believe anything unusual had ever happened.
The other weird thing about Kirchtag is how the attendees changed over the week. The first few days were clearly just diehard locals who live in the oldtown. The next few days were more people from the area, but still mostly Austrian. The majority of these folks were dressed in Tracht. By Saturday the fashions and the language changed to Italian, as huge numbers of our southern neighbors came to party.
The topic of language brings me to another point. I’ve been getting more comfortable with everyday transactions. I know how to ask for things at the deli and how to respond when the checkout clerk asks for my customer card or whether I need a bag. Some of these expressions become routine after a while and I don’t have to think too much about them anymore. However, the real barrier to our progress with German is the accent here. Many people in this area speak a different dialect that is completely lost on me – I can’t understand a word of it. Even those who speak “regular” German (I won’t call it hoch Deutsch because it certainly is not), speak it with a strong regional accent. We are just beginning to figure it out after months.
“i hob…” is roughly how they say “ich habe…” and it gets more complicated from there, as some words are not just pronounced different, but actually a different word. It’s all part of the experience and generally everyone understands us, if not the other way around. We learned quite a few new phrases during the festival, the one that got the most use being “zwo bier.”
A few more scenes from Kirchtag to finish off – If you want to see the dancers, the parade, and more from the set up, check the link to our photos on Smugmug to the right at “Our Photo Gallery” under Other Travels.
halftime