Sunday, 18-Sept-2022


Ages back, a coworker of mine had an unbelievably good smelling lunch. It was potatoes and some kind of sausage, from what I could tell, and when I asked him about it he filled me in that it was from a butcher in a town called “Mt. Angel”.

I never did make it to that butcher… but I’ve had a note in my grocery list to track those sausages down ever since. When I heard from the same coworker that Mt. Angel was hosting one of the largest Oktoberfest celebrations in Oregon… well, two birds with one stone, yeah?

I pinged my neighbors, we piled into the car, and headed over!!


First off… not sure why, but I really thought it was just down the street. Not… like, a 45min drive away. Weird, right? Not sure why I thought it was close, but… yeah. Anyways, we drove. We parked, we caught a ride on a tractor to get into the center of town. It was cool.

The Oktoberfest itself was… interesting. I can’t tell if it was underwhelming because I’m not really into huge fairs, or if I’m off my normal thanks to living under the threat of a global pandemic for almost three years… but it was strange and less than super fun being in a massive crowd of people.

Granted, the group of folks marching (yes, literally marching) through the event with their huge banners and bullhorns shouting about how we’re all sinners who need to repent (via a cash donation) or die (in a fiery hell) didn’t really help the atmosphere… but thankfully they disappeared fairly quickly.

I like to think they were either called back down to the underworld by their dark masters, or they were imprisoned in the phantom zone by Superman, but… maybe someone finally just hit them until they stopped talking?

Anyways.



It was interesting, fun to get back into a huge street fair, and I was able to pick up quite a few excellent beers and hunks of delicious sausage.

I’ll take it as a win, for a first foray back into a remotely normal world.