It's like this: there are only so many maße of beer that you can drink, particularly when you are laced into the kind of dirndl that makes you feel as swooningly out of breath as an 18th-century courtier. Oktoberfest is not only singing, clutching liters of beer with both hands, and stomping on benches: it's also a long, tiring passeggiata of dodging drunks and horse-drawn wagons, which the breweries wheel out for photo ops. In between the beer tents, roller coasters whip kids high into the air before forcing them to remember—and obey—gravity.
After a couple days, when it all becomes too much, the pro-tip is to shake off your hangover at Munich's English Garden. Even if you come from England—which has no shortage of gardens—it’s worth making the trip, if only to watch the surfers. They are here all year long, drawn to a standing river wave called the Eisbachwelle. In the middle of landlocked Bavaria, they wait in rows on both sides of the water, slick as seals in their wetsuits, and take turns plunging into the torrent.
The beer at Oktoberfest, all the millions of liters of it, comes until you can't stand any longer. Likewise, the river's wave is a perfect, unending barrel. Despite the surfers' elegant athleticism, it is only so long before each one miscalculates. Eventually they all tumble back into the foam, coasting so quickly downstream that it’s many lengths before they struggle up to the surface and back onto the grass.
