Fest Comparison: German vs. Irish

This weekend I went to Irish Fest with Tiffy and Jilly Moose, and I was really fascinated with the differences between it and German Fest. For one thing, German Fest is a better value for your money. The parking is a LOT (no pun intended) less, the entry fee is less, and beer is less than at Irish Fest. Also, at Irish Fest you had to buy tickets to get beer, you couldn’t just go up to a vendor and purchase it directly. What this system was supposed to accomplish was beyond any of us. Also, at Irish Fest you could hear people bragging about how Irish their last names were and/or what part of Ireland their ancestors had come from, and nobody was doing that at German Fest. Everything at Irish Fest was an exaggeration, even the greeting: cead mile failte. It means “one hundred thousand welcomes.” Since I have a tendency to exaggerate, that is one more thing I can blame on my Celtic heritage. One guy said something about how this was the 187^th Irish Fest his dance troupe had been at, which is quite an accomplishment when Irish Fest has only been going on since 1981. The shirts were cleverer at Irish Fest; they would say things like, “Good looks, intelligence, and IRISH too? How does it get any better?” whereas at German Fest I saw a shirt that said, “If you aren’t German, you aren’t sh*t.” Which surprised me a little bit, since you would think Germans would be cautious about asserting their racial superiority, considering their history of doing so and where it led them. I did think one T-shirt for women was pretty funny, though – it said, “Check out these Bavarian peaks!” Tiffy, Jilly Moose, and I looked in vain for commemorative Irish Fest hats like our German Fest ones, or free beads and temporary tattoos, but at Irish Fest even the temporary tattoos cost a quarter. Is this because people of Irish descent have more money than those of German descent, or are they just willing to pay more? I have no answers, just observations. I will say, however, that the music at Irish Fest is much better.

Famous Hat