Occasional Observations

Little Italy: The middle Oktoberfest weekend is known as Italian Weekend, for good reason - late September is when all the camper vans in the whole of Italy (seemingly) head over the "Passo del Brennero" and into Munich.

With a hotel room easily costing ?200 a night, a camper sleeping five is cheap accommodation. It's close to the action, and almost always packed to capacity by a group of young men. This is the third and last "Wies'n Wochenende" but again this morning the streets were filled by newly-arrived camper vans bearing Italian registrations.

Until a couple of years back, there were no camper wagon restrictions on the streets of Munich - with the result that you'd find Italian campers everywhere. Literally everywhere. These days they're herded into a couple of huge makeshift campsites close to U-bahns, but well away from the 'fest itself. The occasional maverick tries parking on the street nearby but either gets moved on, or towed.

Local knowledge: We started compiling a "how to spot a non-local at the Oktoberfest" guide. Here's some of the funnier ones:

• They stop and take photos at the main entrance - often grinning like a Cheshire cat
• They're in a group all wearing custom-made t-shirts with a silly slogan boasting about their beer drinking capabilities - often in Italian
• They buy (at ?20 a pop) and wear the silly Oktoberfest hats - and the even sillier ones such as the beer keg hat
• They slurp, instead of sipping
• They're wrecked by midday
• If the main entrance to a tent is closed, they shrug and move on without trying the side doors...

Foreigners dressing up: I was at an evening meeting this week where Trachten was optional - and it was mostly the Americans and Brits wearing lederhosen/dirndls, while the Germans wore suits.

Here's a way better pic of the super-scary merry-go-round at Oktoberfest. As the photographer, tschnitzlein, puts it, best viewed large. His Flickr photostream includes a second pic of the ride - also worth viewing. And if you're gonna ride it you'd better hurry up. Last orders on Tuesday next week.

A few hours completely offline, thanks to a failed power supply on a firewall, has underlined just how dependent I've become on always-on web access to do my job. No email? No chance of doing my work. No web? A hundred niggly things are suddenly not possible - grabbing a logo for a presentation, a bit of research into the competitive landscape, checking someone's job title, looking for online clips from a press release we distributed yesterday.

A significant realisation was that the fax is not an effective fallback. Of the 450 or so people in my business contacts book I have fax numbers for fewer than 10.

Just back from the launch of TechTarget Germany - with three new websites and two new magazines, it's a step forwards for targeted advertising and pay-per-lead, not just pay-per-click.

So I took the chance to ask one of the senior journalists there if he thought the new sophistication would force PR flunkies to also raise their game - his answer was that he'll need PR people as much as ever for the content that will drive people to the TechTarget sites, and keep them coming back. Let's just hope that companies realise this as well.

A day of rain didn't dampen spirits at the Oktoberfest, which, apart from a gigantic beer festival with huge tents, is also a massive funfair. One the star attractions there is a giant roundabout which spins riders round up to 52-meters in the air - as you can see from this rather blurry picture on the official Oktoberfest website. The darned thing is visible from my office desk, so it was inevitable that I'd eventually ride it.

I overcame various fears and did that on Sunday, yes, it's high - and quite windy, too. I was surprised to see it operating in the lashing rain today - with passengers. Presumably they came down soaking wet.

Solved the playlist problem. Turns out that the trick is getting the Windows Mobile multimedia players to actually read m3u files, since otherwise they'll just read the filenames.

I like the MortPlayer, which is freeware that can be found at www.sto-helit.de. It probably goes without saying that a player with that name and website URL is very able to play Ogg Vorbis files.

A night in the Haxnbraterei tent helped get me into the Oktoberfest spirit. Don't overlook the smaller tents, they're much more intimate and less packed than the big ones (which can get pretty crowded and often unbelievably noisy, as the Schottenhamel tent was from 8pm last night). But when in search of the Wies'n spirit keep an eye on the prices of spirits - with a single shot of schnapps pegged at around EUR €7.50 it's the same price as a Maß of beer.

Oh I wish I'd had a camera to hand, since a pink unicorn just flew past my office window. No joking. Read some of the posts below if you haven't worked out how this could happen.

It's the calm before the storm: the Oktoberfest opens in less than 24 hours now - and with my office being located across the road, it's going to be busy outside.

The police roadblocks are up, as is the steel fencing around the office's perimeter so at least I won't need to step over "beer corpses" on the way into the office.

Since the tents began going up in July, I feel that I've already lived with the Wies'n for months ... now it's finally about to start. Prost!

It's 1am and the street on which I live is deserted, hardly surprising, as we're "genz weit drausen" in any case. It's dark, and all quiet - then there's a rustling noise and a deep cough that half-wakes me from slumber. As I lie there listening, there are further rustles, another cough, and then the sound of crunching. Yes, we've got cows in the field across the road, and one of them woke me up.

Too hot outside?
We're on the Italian Riviera a few km from the French border. It's 25 degrees C at 7.30pm and the British campers are eating inside their tents, which are firmly zipped up. The Italians are outside in groups, chatting and enjoying a bottle of wine. The Germans, and the Dutch, too. Austrians? Haven't seen any at this site; doesn't mean there ain't any, but their cars are relatively scarce on the roads, too.

So what drives the British indoors? Is it that the weather in the UK usually doesn't accommodate al fresco dining? We will be eating out tomorrow evening and will check whether the inside tables are occupied, and if so, by whom.

Post vacation note: never did check...

A place in the sun?
The sun was shining on a Saturday afternoon and for some 20 km along the Ligurian coast, there was not a single parking place to be had. It's the first weekend in September; if it's this packed now, goodness only knows what it was like at the heart of the high season.

Off the grid
Refreshing to be off the grid - albeit checking SMS twice daily. Communication is real time and one to one or one to group; no cc-ing for info or forwarding. Yes, there are messages out there on the mailserver, they will still be there when there are not so many distractions.

Sand Vs Stones
From the beach in Alassio: Why sandy beaches won the PR war vs pebbles escapes me. And seawater - uurgh. Call me a neo-inlander but I'll take a pebbly beach at a frecashwater resort, thanks. Lago di Garda is up there in the rankings.

From the shore of Lake Garda: That said, Garda's shores are noticably dirtier than the Italian Riviera beaches. It's a week later and now mid-September and the night-time air temperature is 10-plus degrees cooler.

Defragged
Have now been offline for 10 days and it's been bliss. I think I'd fallen victim to what's being called fragging: a mad blitzing between devices, flipping from handheld to lappie to cell, not to mention alt-tabbing frenetically through messages. Post-holiday resolution: Be calmer.