Travel Blog

Some more thoughts about Oktoberfest – which in a normal year would be winding down right now – and the writing life.

The story I wrote (the lede of which I posted two weeks ago) covered the two days I spent at Oktoberfest in 2006. The first was Opening Day, which I attended with a friend of a friend. We sat with his colleagues from work at a reserved table in a little alcove in the Hacker tent.

I returned on Tuesday by myself. I wandered the grounds, checking out the various tents, and when it started to rain I ducked into the Augustiner one. I walked up and down the aisles, trying to find a group that looked friendly and quotable. One appeared promising but it was veiled in smoke. Finally, recklessly, I took a seat at an empty table.

Not long afterward two young women in dirndls asked if the seats opposite me were vacant. At least that’s what I assumed they had asked. They were, it turned out, university students who spoke excellent English. They came to Oktoberfest every year and had already accumulated a wealth of stories. (I had optimistically brought a pen and paper.) One of their friends arrived, also female, followed by another. And then another. My once-forlorn table was turning into perhaps the loveliest in the tent. Toward the end of the evening three young men in lederhosen, including an ex-boyfriend, joined the party. By that point I had been talking and drinking and jotting notes for 10 hours.

When I got home I wrote my story and divided it into two parts, which ran on consecutive Sundays in the Sun-Sentinel. I was particularly pleased with it because, in addition to describing the event (with lots of dialogue, a rarity in travel stories), it illustrated the two means by which travel writers tend to get their stories: contacts and serendipity. And it revealed, without ever mentioning the two M.O.s, that the second one is often the more rewarding.

After the story was published in the paper I sent it to The Best American Travel Writing anthology. The editor put it on the shortlist, but the guest editor that year, Susan Orlean, failed to include it. One of the stories she chose in its place had appeared in Gourmet, a more distinguished publication. It was by a New Yorker colleague of hers who had gone to Swans Island in Maine on a family vacation and failed to pack sufficient provisions.