It's almost Oktoberfest, that time of year when Biermädchen run around in dirndl skirts with massive flagons of beer, pretzels, wurst and tiny roast chickens. Traditionally in Germany, it's also the time of year when people smoke up a storm in the beer tents–until this year.
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The citizens of Bayern (that's Bavaria to you, Englisch) passed a referendum banning smoking, and it affects the beer tents of Munich's famous festival. The issue is that the smell of smoke covered up various other unsavory smells (partially bioprocessed beer and sudden acute reverse-thrust beer, for example), and Germans have a horror of things being unclean or smelly.
According to Der Spiegel, a man named Hubert Hackl has the answer, though: a solution containing a grime-fighting bacteria called Elbomex (insert Mexican elbow grease joke here). The floorboards will be swabbed with this miracle solution, and the Elbomex bacteria will remove most of the odor, leaving behind that fresh farm dirt smell. (Really.)
You won't need to worry about the need for deodorizing bacteria at Orange County's Oktoberfeste, however: what's needed here is a bacteria to eliminate the buildup of drunken skinheads on their third Maß of dunkles.
