októberfest

So there's a huge tent out on the lawn in front of the main building at the University of Iceland. In fact, I once read an article that claimed that this tent was in fact the largest tent in all of the Land. But I had no idea what it was for. It's appeared every year at this time since I've been here.

Well, I just wasn't plugged-in enough to the 20-something university kid scene, apparently, because I had no idea that this tent contains a full-scale Icelandic rendering of Oktoberfest. Professor Zoph and I went last night around 9:30 and the place was jammed, a massive magic tent room that was warm and not a little steamy. There were dozens of long tables set up and these were filled to capacity with sweater-wearing jabbering smoking Icelandic college kids. At the back of the tent was a plastic-covered monolith of a bar with an army of students to work it, fetching draft Vikings and emptying kids' debit card accounts into the three glowing card swipers clustered in the middle. There were at least a couple hundred people in that tent, and anytime there are a couple hundred of something in Iceland, right there and then you know something is going down.

We grabbed a table near the stage and drank beers and talked to our slightly insane (in that variety of mild insanity that college freshman seem to display) tablemates and were joined by more friends. A small assortment of Munich-costumed Oktoberfest girls milled around the tent, seemingly unsure of what to do. Later it transpired that there was a screechingly MCed costume contest up at the stage. This was followed by a dude idly spinning classic rock tunes (Iceland loves the Zep) and the classic rock seemed to trigger general milling on a tent-wide scale. There was a widely shared buzz in the air, though, for tonight. Tonight is apparently the night. So sad I won't be able to make it. But maybe you can, gentle reader.