Oompah pah, oompah pah — and they’re off! A hundred dachshunds, costumed in faux hot dog buns with mustard squiggles, race across Cincinnati’s Fountain Square.
The Running of the Wieners is the sentimental start to Oktoberfest Zinzinnati, as 5,000 people roar their encouragement to the fleet little dogs. The dachshunds will run at noon Friday, September 17, and by Sunday evening the festival crowds will have grown a hundredfold — into the largest Oktoberfest in the U.S.
Cincinnati’s Oktoberfest, begun as a block party in 1976, is now second in size only to the original festival in Munich. The German Oktoberfest, created in 1810 to celebrate the wedding of Prince Ludwig I and Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen, sees seven million people each fall munching pretzels, dancing polkas and, of course, quaffing beer.
Cincinnati is an old German city, seeing two major waves of immigration in the 1840s and 1880s. It’s fitting that the Running of the Wieners, followed by the official opening ceremony September 18 and the tapping of the first beer keg, all take place under the beneficent gaze of the Genius of Waters on Fountain Square. The graceful Genius statue stands atop the Tyler Davidson Fountain, Cincinnati’s hallmark in the heart of the city; the bronze was cast, appropriately, in Munich.
Oktoberfest sprawls for six blocks along Fifth Street, from Race to Broadway. Dozens of fest tents sell beer, pretzels, bratwurst, mettwurst, sauerkraut balls, potato pancakes and Limburger cheese. And don’t forget that distinctly Cincinnati delicacy: goetta, a sizzling mix of ground pork and pin oats created by thrifty German hausfraus.
It’s fun to settle down in a tent and listen to a polka band over nibbles and beer especially brewed for Oktoberfest. Later, it’s time for strudel and cream puffs.
Stuffed? Then it’s up on your feet for the World’s Largest Chicken Dance, another Cincinnati invention that calls for flapping arms, a wiggling bottom and total abandon. In the 1990s, the Guinness Book of Records counted a record 48,000 dancers, and Cincinnati still proclaims itself home of the World’s Largest Chicken Dance.
Oktoberfest’s celebrity grand marshal leads the chicken dance on Fountain Square. One year, Cincinnati Bengals player Chad Ochocinco strutted his stuff. Last year, George “Cheers” Wendt and Homer Simpson shook their tail feathers on stage. D’oh!
The dance may inspire you to buy a chicken hat or even a dachshund hat as a memento of Oktoberfest Zinzinnati. Good luck trying to explain it to the folks back home.