Oktoberfest

I voted today! I don't want this blog to get political, so I won't speak on who I voted for, but wanted to mention that I acted as an involved Canadian citizen and did my part in our decision-making process. Whenever I get into the voting box, I always worry that I'm going to mess things up somehow and accidentally vote for the opposite person of who I want, and wind up quadruple-checking that I did it right. And then I get self-conscious that someone is waiting for me to finish, and wondering how someone can take so long to draw an x in a box. It just feels weird that something with so much buildup only takes a couple of seconds to actually do. Something about that sheet of paper, which looks like a scantron and comes with a #2 pencil, reminds me of a school exam and I wind up overthinking.

Oktoberfest just finishing in Kitchener. Kitchener is silly about Oktoberfest. They close down all of Downtown for nine days and all of the bus stops in that area are inactive. All buses are free after 11 during this week, although you have to walk outside the Oktoberfest area to get one, and there are cabs parked everywhere to help prevent drunk driving. There are police stationed everywhere. Men are wearing lederhosen all over the place, which is kind of funny, because women will frequently wear revealing clothes in cold weather, but at Oktoberfest it's the men who choose fashion over function. Doing anything in Oktoberfest is called "Oktoberfesting". There's a mascot for the festival (Onkel Hans), who represents it in a similar way to how Santa represents Christmas.  I went home for Thanksgiving, and Guelph's downtown was dead, probably because so many people were at Kitchener's Oktoberfest. There's a store (which I've never been in) called "Oktoberfest" and it stands year-round. If Kitchener were in The Nightmare Before Christmas, where there are portals to different dimensions that constantly celebrate a specific holiday, then Kitchener would be the Oktoberfest dimension.

I kind of hate Oktoberfest. I enjoy drinking, but shutting down the core of the city is a bit much. It makes getting anywhere difficult, and I just don't particularly enjoy the atmosphere.