Students unite to celebrate Oktoberfest

More than 30 students gathered in Foster Shea's ground floor lounge last Thursday night to celebrate the German tradition of Oktoberfest. This event, which was run by the German House, embraced the spirit of Oktoberfest.\nOktoberfest, which began in 1810 as a celebration of Crown Prince Ludwig I's wedding, has become one of Bavaria's proudest moments and one of the world's largest public spectacles.\nBecause German beer is made without preservatives, Oktoberfest has also become an excuse to drink millions of gallons of beer before it spoils. While no alcohol was served at the Foster version of Oktoberfest, the event was filled with tastes and sounds of Germany. \nTraditional German food, such as potato cakes, broetchen (a hard German bread), sausage, and chocolate pudding filled the tables, offering participants an authentic taste of German culture. Non-alcoholic beer and Fanta, a soda popular in Germany, were offered to quench reveler's thirsts. Also, German music was played, fully immersing the room with the oompah-oompah sounds of traditional German music.\nSophomore Aarik Williams, the co-coordinator of the event, saw Oktoberfest as a good way to bring German culture to people who are not exposed to it. \n"I feel that this is a good opportunity to enlighten people about German culture," he said. "I hope people take a liking to it."\nOktoberfest has become an IU tradition of sorts, taking place each year for the last ten years. Nikole Langjahr, the head coordinator and an associate instructor for the Germanic Studies department, has worked to make the event more authentic.\n"In the past, we just let students bring any food they wanted, we just partied," she said. "The last two years, we have been trying to make it more and more German. We cook German food and play German music."\nMany students who attended Oktoberfest are students in the Germanic Studies department looking to brush up on their language skills. \n"I was hoping to have a chance to practice my German," said freshman Jeremy Sorokes. "This is supposed to be Oktoberfest, you cannot have Oktoberfest without speaking in German."\nAll who attended IU's Oktoberfest agreed that it provided a flavor of the traditional Bavarian celebration of fall and friendship.