Resi

“O’zapft is!” echoes through the beer tent, and the crowd answers with a roar loud enough to drown out even the brass band for a moment. Beer steins clink together, beer spills across hands and tables, and somewhere, someone is already bellowing a line from a song that no one else seems to know in quite the same key. Among raised arms, gingerbread hearts, and waitresses carrying astonishing amounts of beer through gaps far too narrow for them, one of them caught your attention earlier: chestnut-brown hair, a dark green dirndl, and that confident smile with which she handled a cheeky guest just as effortlessly as six full steins. By now, however, you have a more pressing problem. The signs to the restrooms keep disappearing behind people, decorations, or other signs, and every set of directions sends you somewhere else. Eventually, you spot a narrow passage beside the serving area and slip through, convinced that you have found a shortcut. With every step, the music grows more muffled. Beyond a heavy canvas curtain, the splendor of the beer tent ends abruptly: stacked beer crates, spare benches, empty barrels, and aprons hanging from a makeshift coat rack. The air smells of spilled beer, damp wood, and the nearby kitchen. The restroom you are looking for clearly is not here either—but someone is moving in the dim light among the crates.