No Small Beer: Peguera's Oktoberfest

The Oktoberfest is on. Not the one in Munich, the one that is really a Septemberfest, but the one in Peguera, little Germany on the island's south side. 70,000 litres of German beer have crossed the Mediterranean in order to wet the whistle of Germans and others at this mini-me drinks marathon until 20 October. One Spanish report of the beer festival mentioned, almost with alarm, that the beer is not served in any quantity less than half a litre.

Beer for Germans is culture in a way that it is not for the British. It is woven into German society in a far more fundamental manner. Small towns have their breweries. Small towns and villages have their annual fairs - the "Kirchweihfesten" - at the heart of which are trestles to accommodate the beer drinkers. Beer is so much a part of German life that I once watched a television football discussion between Franz Beckenbauer and Paul Breitner. On the table in front of them were two glasses of "Weizen", wheat beer. It's hard to imagine Lineker and Shearer with a couple of pints of Tetley's in the "Match Of The Day" studio.

The Peguera Oktoberfest is an example not just of the transporting of beer to Mallorca but also the bringing of German ways to the island. The relationship between Germany and Mallorca is of a different order to the one between Britain and the island. The Germans and the Brits form the two most important tourist markets (and also form the most populous of European resident groups), but there is a deeper bond between Germany and the island, and not just one reflected in what is almost certainly an urban myth - that some German businessmen once tried to buy Mallorca.

Not so long ago, it was said by a local politician that the British have Mallorca in their "genes". It was an exaggeration. In Germany, on the other hand, Mallorca is a part of the national DNA. In Germany, you can easily buy Mallorca's German newspapers or you can watch a Schlagermusik special, probably from Peguera, or Thomas Gottschalk's "Wetten, dass...?" TV show being beamed from Palma. You can even find the Mallorca weather report on national telly.

So strong is the link that there is an imaginary lebensrauming land and sea bridge from Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg that reaches as far as Mallorca. It is no surprise that the Bierfest or Kirchweih should be re-created. But an Oktoberfest or a Gottschalk show might imply that the relationship is frivolous. Not so. The Germans take their Mallorca seriously.

As a people, they are curious and inquisitive as well as acquisitive of knowledge to a degree that the Brits are not. Sometimes it can be intrusive, such as when they are standing at the gate taking photos. But they arm themselves with every guide book imaginable and, being German, follow routes or recommendations to the letter. Every German seems to have actually read George Sand's "Winter In Mallorca", unlike everyone else who may have heard of it but can't be bothered to read it. The Germans will try the language, because they're interested in doing so and are not phased by cocking up, the product probably of the fact that they do foreign languages anyway, which is not the way with the Brits.

Beer, though, is a different matter. The Germans are as capable, if not more so than the British, of putting it away in industrial quantities. As the lovely Lisa and Johanna, two German students at the neighbours' house this summer put it: "there are much very drunken persons in Arenal". They didn't approve. Beer is where Germany really kicks in and Mallorca fades into the background. The Germans take their Mallorca seriously, but not when it comes to beer. They take that just as seriously. For Germans, it is Weizen or helles or dunkel beers that matter, and not a Saint Mick. The Peguera Oktoberfest is a manifestation of Germans' obsessiveness with the Reinheitsgebot purity order of their beer. And they're right to be obsessive; German beer is the best in the world. Which is why cutting along to Peguera isn't such a bad idea before it all runs out. Prost!


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.