Patrick Brugh strode between the cars and minivans in the Timonium Fairgrounds parking lot Sunday afternoon in his very own pair of lederhosen.
Fresh back home in the Baltimore area from teaching English in the town of Bamberg, Germany, Brugh was dressed for the occasion at the German Festival.
“It?s nice and comfy,” he said, showing off his traditional black shorts. “It?s meant for drinking. It?s got this flap in front” so one can more easily, um, relieve oneself.”
The festival?s organizers came through for beer-lovers, with taps running out of coolers inside. But, as organizers said, the goal of the day was to stoke interest in German culture generally ? whether by advertising free courses in the language, or setting up a genealogy booth for patrons to trace their heritage.
Hans Steffen lives in Linthicum now, but until 1957 he lived in a town near Stuttgart, he said. (Refer to your mental map of Germany.) The retired NATO staffer came to the United States just before his 18th birthday.
Steffen has a very secret recipe for schnitzel and, this weekend, turned out stacks of pans of the tenderized pork neck for the festival. The recipe involves batter, soaking, colanders, bread crumbs ? and 375 pounds of meat.
“That gives about 1,500 schnitzels, roughly,” he said. Nearly two-thirds of the meat went the first day, he said, and too bad for late-comers: “We can?t make anymore.”
Traditional fairgoers also were well-served, with pastries and live music.
A fair organizer said that this year, the festival?s first in Timonium, drew the biggest crowds in recent memory.
“The cool thing about German is not a lot of people take it, not a lot of people learn it,” he said. Since his language skills were rare, he got a $1,000 grant to go see the country for the first time in college, he said, and “fell in love.”
