Close your eyes and fly to New Ulm. Open them again and you may think you are a continent away in Hamburg or other German community. But this is Minnesota. Winters are hell. Even in October you need a mass of lager to warm your magen.

By Robert Metz
Travelers who would like to revel in their German ancestry at Oktoberfest needn't fret that they didn?t get to Munich in September. Go no further that New Ulm, Minnesota, for a quality as Teutonic as black bread -- make that sliced German brot.

New Ulm is so German non-speakers may need a Wörterbuch. Lacking a dictionary, bring kin who speak Deutsch . The German spirit is intense in New Ulm.

You know Willkommen on the city limits billboard is New Ulm's germanic way of saying "Glad to see ya!" and Auf Wiedersehen means just, well, "See ya!"

The Music is "non stop" says George Glotzbach. Lining the downtown streets will be bands with local musicians and a couple of bands from Germany. Rockers move on. This festival features "Old Tyme" music only. Also, more German food than anyone ought to eat.?

But what is a German-language-bereft you to make of Haar Friseure? (It's where the town barber lurks.) Mietwaschsalon is not a beauty salon. It's a laundromat.

Okay, so phonetically, Baeckerei is, not surprisingly, a place to buy bread and pastries made by a descendant of New Ulm's mid-19th century German immigrants.

You won't go hungry if you follow your nase to Veigel's Kaiserhoff. Veigel will be delighted to rustle up an authentic Sauerkraut und Schnitzel dinner.

Should we care about authenticity? Fritz Busch, a reporter for the New Ulm, MN newspaper The Journal remarks, "Oktoberfest is an institution popular with all Germans and Americans who enjoy beer and bratwurst." Jawohl!

New Ulm offers Gemütlichkeit On The Prairie -- good fellowship and all that. You may want to stay overnight for one of the two Oktoberfest week-ends -- October 4, 5 or October 11, 12. If so, you?ll hear the familiar New Ulm rallying call.

Each day at 10 p.m. New Ulm's public utility blows a sharp whistle that can be heard throughout this Minnesota community of nearly 14,000. It's a tradition town folk used in earlier times to remind citizens to unite their families at a reasonable hour.

An unusual practice perhaps. But then New Ulm is not your run-of-the-mill town. Nestled just 90 miles southwest of the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, it is in the heart of the Minnesota River Valley. Street signs and store fronts reflect the town's German heritage -- those Deutsche words we went over earlier, dankeschön-very-much.

So what do you get in New Ulm in full Oktoberfest stride? Well, spirits, of course.

August Schell Brewing Company is America's second oldest brewery (1860.) German-American D. G. Yuengling first poured mash in PA in 1829 when New Ulm was yet a sea of grass like the rest of the western prairie.

Schell brews an Oktoberfest special. Old-timer George Glotzbach loves the beer. Born in New Ulm, when asked why there, he cracks, "I wanted to be near my mother."

George had a Schell?s special Oktoberfest beer at B & L's Bar Tuesday: "Superb with full bodied flavor," he said, adding, it's "So good you could chew it."

Glotzbach, is well-connected in New Ulm, an unofficial spokesman and a hard-to-please beer-drinker. He disparages a top US brand calling it "an alcohol delivery system."

Schell has a dozen signature beers and also brews Grain Belt, made with a recipe Schell acquired from a dying brewery. Grain Belt is a Minnesota favorite. Schell also does well in meighboring states including North and South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin.

At Oktoberfest, Schell sends a tank truck to downtown Center and Minnesota Streets. Both streets are closed to wheeled traffic during Oktoberfest.

The ensuing street fair downtown is one of two locations for the Oktoberfest. The Holiday Inn is the other and the hotel is the festival's commercial hub.

During festivities on the downtown streets school bands parade. New Ulm families, proud of the freedom they found when they immigrated to America, trail the marching bands with signs aloft listing family names and the year their ancestors arrived in New Ulm.

They pass the town Glockenspiel, a three story tower with bells that toll three afternoon hours. Figurines representing pioneers, Indians and a brewer emerge from a round platform at the top to do a little dance marking the hours that ring the bells.

The parade goes by a monument to Hermann, a Cheruscan chieftain at the time of Christ who defended German tribes against a Roman imperial army. It is a New Ulm freedom symbol.

Locals, in native attire dance to the polkas, waltzes, laenders and schottishes played by the bands.

Back at the Holiday Inn, the primary Oktoberfest location, visitors can buy music by local bands on CD disks. New Ulm was once home to 28 local bands, says George Glotzbach.

The New Ulm population is 40 percent protestant and 40 percent catholic. During Oktoberfest there is a polka-band mass celebrated at the local church, which is packed with local Catholics listening as the band adopts familiar hymns to a modified polka beat.

For a Channel 5 (Twin City) video on the New UlM Oktoberfest click HERE.

In town square, there is an Ok-Tuba-Fest band made up solely of tuba players tootling harmonically to marches by German-American composer John Philip Souza and others.

Adding to the musical feast, the Concert Choir formed in 1931 sings German Lieder in the original German. Songs like the love song the writer?s father used to sing around our Indiana home. It goes Du, du liegst mir im Herzen, du, du liegst mir im Sinn. Translation: You, you are in my heart; You, you are in my mind.

Convinced this Oktoberfest is not for the non-German tourist?

Seriously, you will not be language-challenged. New Ulm residents under the age of 30 are rarely bi-lingual. Speak to any rosy-cheeked youth and the response will be strictly Amerikaner.