Oktoberfest, Cambridge style

As in Germany so in Cambridge, folks gather for Oktoberfest — a chance to hang out together, eat and listen to music. I understand the German version may involve a little more beer than the Cambridge version, but I’m pretty confident that nobody beats our musical scene.

I volunteered to work at my church’s bookstore / reading room after church this afternoon, so Alla came to Cambridge with some sandwiches for us to eat together before I opened for business. Since the reading room is right in the middle of Oktoberfest, she didn’t manage to leave the area until well after I finished my three-hour shift. I got to spend a couple of hours there too, and had a very good time. Alla kept coming back to the reading room to tell me about arts and crafts she liked. I liked them too, but I didn’t get any pictures of them.

I did get quite a few pictures of bands and band members. Some of the band uniforms bore some similarity to conventional school band uniforms, but most of them were unified only by color schemes and general freakiness. I’m not sure the music would have sounded so good without the ridiculous uniforms, but we found them generally quite listenable and certainly very amusing.

I also enjoyed a participatory art project by an organization trying to solicit good ideas for the betterment of society. I visited this organization’s web site and found it pretty empty, but today’s project worked out well. They passed out blank sticky notes and marking pens, asking people to write down what makes them happy. I wrote down “eye contact” and put my note as high as I could reach. (Mine is the highest blue one, but not the highest note of all. In fact, somebody beat me by about a meter.)

There are more pictures in my album