Oktoberfest Brings Out the Wurst

Start with a truckload of sauerkraut, add a little oompah music, keep the beer flowing--and everyone is German for a day.

So it went Sunday for an estimated 10,000 visitors--a few wearing lederhosen, most in more conventional shorts and sandals--to the 14th annual Oktoberfest, sponsored by the Newbury Park Rotary Club.

By noon, the line for bratwurst and fixings wound around the entire picnic area at Conejo Creek Park North. Other revelers strolled among more than 70 crafts booths, splashed in the park’s fountain or just sat in the shade enjoying the German music of the Los Angeles-based band The Chase.

The event is the Rotary Club’s biggest fund-raiser of the year, said Oktoberfest chairman Jeff Losey. Last year, the group raised about $25,000, and proceeds will go to 35 Conejo Valley charities.

Food was clearly the big draw Sunday. And after 14 years of putting on Oktoberfests, organizers joke that they’ve “got it right.” The authentic Nuremberger bratwurst was delivered from a Glendale-based German butcher who mixes 850 pounds of the veal-pork-and-herb mixture just for the event. Rhineland Deli of Thousand Oaks expected to serve more than 2,000 helpings of apple and cherry strudel, and Becks beer was offering both its regular brew and an Oktoberfest recipe.

Oktoberfest started in 1810 in Munich as a combination wedding and harvest bash put on by Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria. The official festivities lasted five days and included military parades, horse races, music, eating and drinking.

The festival grew, and Munich’s Oktoberfest 2000 will run from Sept. 16 to Oct. 3.

While the weeks-long Munich festival is big enough to fill several stadiums and has its own jail where the more raucous types can sober up, the Thousand Oaks event aims to be more laid-back and family-oriented.

“The food is good, the entertainment is good, it qualifies as German,” laughed Theresia Struniak, 64, of Newbury Park but originally from Munich. She brought her 6-year-old grandson, Bryan Collins, for some food and dancing.

It also has its traditions, especially the homemade sauerkraut created each year by Camarillo resident Monika Holderied.

Holderied, a native of Germany, starts cooking at 7 a.m. the day before each year’s festival in space donated by Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks. She and the other volunteers mix half a ton of marinated cabbage, bacon, onions and juniper berries to make a sauerkraut that is subtler and richer than that found in most restaurants and stores. The recipe was passed down from Holderied’s grandmother, she said.

She got the job when her husband, Werner, a former member of the Newbury Park Rotary club, suggested the idea of an Oktoberfest fund-raiser 14 years ago.

Holderied volunteered to make a few pounds of sauerkraut that year. It proved so popular she made a bigger batch the following year. Soon, the club was requesting batches so big she needed a professional kitchen willing to lend space.

“We have it down to a science, and every year we find more shortcuts,” she said of her helpers at the hospital’s kitchen. “Now I mark it on my calendar and the Rotary Club lives in fear that I might go to Germany at that time.”

Josef Garcia of Ventura brought his whole family, including his father, brother and daughter. They travel to as many Oktoberfests each year as they can.

They love the atmosphere, he said.

“You can sit next to complete strangers and get talking to them,” he said. “We were sitting next to a couple who just came back from Germany and telling us about their trip.”

The Thousand Oaks festival may not have the size of the German bash, but looking over the crowd on Sunday, emcee Steve Brooks said Crown Prince Ludwig would feel right at home.

“The only thing they do in Munich that we don’t do here is roast a whole oxen,” he said.