Beer Festival

by Claudia Schwarz, Austria
What do you expect when you hear "Beer Festival"? I think of Oktoberfest, lots of beer, big tent, annoying loud drunkards, people dancing on tables, and lousy, loud music. The advertisement of the Ohio Brew Week Festival actually draws a parallel to the German beer festival: "One of the two week-long beer-centric festivals in the world (the other is in Germany)."

Well, apparently, I couldn't have been more mistaken.

First of all, there was a small vintage car and motorbike show. It was neat but I'm still trying to figure out the connection between motor vehicles and beer (help, anyone?). As we got to the 'actual' festival, one of the bars was out of beer (at a beer festival, hello!?), the tent was tiny and only indicated where to buy tickets, there were no drunkards (hardly surprising given the fact that they ran out of beer), no people dancing on tables, and - last but not least - the music was great!

So I cannot exactly say that I was disappointed, because I wasn't, but it was certainly nothing like the beer festival I had expected (and, I have to add, that's not a bad thing at all!).

We received those cute, orange wristbands indicating that we were over 21 and finally managed to buy beer; however, the whole evening wasn't really about the beer because the real attraction of the festival was "The Bob Stewart Band," starring the Director of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Great music and we certainly had a good time! Until about 9.15 p.m. because that's when the whole thing ended; does anyone else think that's early?