* * * * *

I got a thousand dollars from Mr. Oyster (Simon began) in the way of an
advance, and leaving him with Betty who was making out a receipt, I
hustled back to the apartment and packed a bag. Hell, I'd wanted a
vacation anyway, this was a natural. On the way to Idlewild I stopped
off at the Germany Information Offices for some tourist literature.

It takes roughly three and a half hours to get to Gander from Idlewild.
I spent the time planning the fun I was going to have.

It takes roughly seven and a half hours from Gander to Shannon and I
spent that time dreaming up material I could put into my reports to Mr.
Oyster. I was going to have to give him some kind of report for his
money. Time travel yet! What a laugh!

Between Shannon and Munich a faint suspicion began to simmer in my mind.
These statistics I read on the _Oktoberfest_ in the Munich tourist
pamphlets. Five million people attended annually.

Where did five million people come from to attend an overgrown festival
in comparatively remote Southern Germany? The tourist season is over
before September 21st, first day of the gigantic beer bust. Nor could
the Germans account for any such number. Munich itself has a population
of less than a million, counting children.

And those millions of gallons of beer, the hundreds of thousands of
chickens, the herds of oxen. Who ponied up all the money for such
expenditures? How could the average German, with his twenty-five dollars
a week salary?

In Munich there was no hotel space available. I went to the Bahnhof
where they have a hotel service and applied. They put my name down,
pocketed the husky bribe, showed me where I could check my bag, told me
they'd do what they could, and to report back in a few hours.

I had another suspicious twinge. If five million people attended this
beer bout, how were they accommodated?

The _Theresienwiese_, the fair ground, was only a few blocks away. I was
stiff from the plane ride so I walked.

* * * * *

There are seven major brewers in the Munich area, each of them
represented by one of the circuslike tents that Mr. Oyster mentioned.
Each tent contained benches and tables for about five thousand persons
and from six to ten thousands pack themselves in, competing for room. In
the center is a tremendous bandstand, the musicians all _lederhosen_
clad, the music as Bavarian as any to be found in a Bavarian beer hall.
Hundreds of p