Where is "Old" Ulm?

New Orleans has Mardi Gras and Rio has Carnival, both of which are OK if you like beautiful people in exotic locations and tons of public nudity. But, if you’re more in the mood for drinking bock beer outside in freezing temperatures in nowhere Minnesota, well then New Ulm’s Bockfest is the location you’re seeking. Granted the aforementioned other festivals have their charm, but where else can you see a wide variety of overweight Midwesterners wearing animal pelts and being greatly over-served?

For the second straight year, the Herkimer Bar sponsored the bus ride from Uptown to New Ulm – about a 90-minute drive. We filled up two buses and couple of beer kegs brewed by the Herkimer’s finest.

The plan once we got the fairgrounds was simple. Get beer tickets, wait in line for beers, get in the line for the bathrooms and repeat. The highlight of standing outside drinking is getting, er, “poked”. In the middle of the grounds is a bonfire and those attending the fire have large iron pokers that they stick into your beer. The result is a carmelization of the beer. As far as highlights, though, it isn’t much of a highlight.

After about three hours of drinking with the folks from Mankato, LeSueur, St. Peter and Owatonna, we got back on the drunk bus and head back north on 169. En route back to the city we stopped at the “Crow Bar” – several drunks on the bus were quick to note the double meaning of the bar’s name. You can’t beat it when 150 drunk idiots descend upon a bar in the middle of nowhere. A bartender at the bar tried to get us to take some drunk home who had been left there by another group stopping by. Apparently this individual was “from the cities” and it was natural that we would want to take this guy home with us and find out where he lives. I imagine that this guy was pretty pissed off at his friends for leaving him when he woke up on the floor of some bar Sunday morning 100 miles from his house. With friends like that, who needs enemies.