Here in central Texas, there is a lot of German influence, with many cool little German towns, yummy restaurants and fun events around Austin and the Hill Country. If you are in the area and want a taste of some of our German heritage, here are just a few of the cool places
Fredricksburg Texas, awesome place to tour local Wineries, visit cute little shops on main street, great authentic German food, and seek-out to a super awesome bat cave with millions of bats
Shiner, TX – Home of Shiner Beer! Nuff said.
Gruene, Texas – Home to Gruene Hall, the oldest dance hall in Texas, where you can still see some great Texas Country music
I could go on and on about the rich German heritage around here, (if you are interested, Wikipedia will tell you more 🙂 But I am here today, to tell you about one of my favorite German traditions, Oktoberfest!
This year, my neighbors and I held our 2nd Annual Oktoberfest.
You may be wondering how this all started, well, its a twisted tale of goblins and gools and beer. Well, every year for Halloween we decide on a theme and dress up (just the adults, the kids normally like to choose their own costumes). So last year we decided on an Oktoberfest theme, with Dirndls and Lederhosen. And soon our Halloween dress up planning , turned into full-on Oktoberfest planning. And the Annual Hofftoberfest tradition was born! Why the name change? Well this guy of course…
Ha, Ha, no, just kidding! The Hoff is priiiity cool, but we named it after the area we live in. It was so fun, that we decided to make it an annual thing and decided to separate it from Halloween, for 1) to have more occasions to celebrate 2) be able to invite more friends (Halloween is kinda a family thing) and 3) have another “dress up” opportunities (maybe this was only me, but it’s important).
So for those of you who want to create your own Oktoberfest, here are the must haves!
1. Awesome Friends who want to create a super fun, and totally fabulous party, just because.
2. Fantastically fabulous Dirndls and Lederhosen worn by the equally fantastically fabulous people. And yes, it is totally acceptable to have to sport t-shirt Lederhosen and flip flops. #Austin
3. Create a Large Street Sign
4. Customized Cups: The guy on the left is really stoked about his customized cup!
5. Lots of Delicious Food and Drinks. With lots of German delicacies, including a few different spaetzle recipes, a variety of potato salads and brautwurst. And Beer (not shown) of course!
6. Sweet treats: like german chocolate brownies, strudel and a big ole’ chocolate cake. Awesome Kitchen Hack alert!
This is my favorite way of cutting a cake at parties with kids around. Large knives and kids don’t mix well.
Optional Oktoberfest Additions
- A Big TV for football… of course.
- Karaoke machine: For when you get tired of watching football or you just feel like gettin’ crazy
What do you think? Are you going to rock Oktoberfest next year? If you do, I wanna See pictures!
Prost!
