Rams Boosters Oompah It Up in the Cradle of Brewskie : Football: Blue-and-gold fans soak up the local color of Munich while warming up for the L.A.-Kansas City game Saturday in Berlin.

MUNICH — “Have a mass of beer!”

That was the advice given to members of the Rams booster club minutes after their arrival in Munich. “And have it the traditional way,” added a lively tour guide. “One liter at a time with white radish and pretzels. Then you’ll know the flavor of Bavaria.”

It was then and there that the boosters knew their Bavarian fling--the one that would take them to Berlin for Saturday’s game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Kansas City Chiefs--wasn’t going to be any teetotaling trip for sissies.

But alas, it poured rain on the capital of Bavaria on Monday. So the boosters--90 strong and decked out in their Rams blue and gold finery--had to go indoors and forgo the legendary joys of swilling beer out of mugs under the leafy shade of chestnut trees. No problem. Some of them simply set out for Mexican food at a spot around the corner from their Munchen Park Hilton Hotel.

“It wasn’t bad,” Jim Ort said over breakfast the following morning. Others set out for a nearby pub to quaff a few mugs of what the locals call “liquid bread” and dine on kraut and frankfurters before crashing after their 11-hour flight from Los Angeles.

They weren’t worried about getting their share of brewskies. Their travel itinerary promised a visit to the famous Hofbrauhaus for their next night on the town. And they had been told that the beers there have heads on them like snowballs and that there would be oompah bands, stein-slinging women in dirndl skirts, pork knuckles (a Munich speciality), potatoes with bacon and apple cake with cream.

They weren’t disappointed. “This reminds me of the Crackers nightclub in Anaheim!” said Mary Jane Stratman, her eyes drinking in the sight of the vaunted beer hall where Adolf Hitler first revealed his plans for the National Socialist Party.

Nearly 600 visitors from around the world shared the Festsaal (festival room) on the third floor of the Hofbrauhaus with the boosters.

Up for merrymaking: Ear-splitting yodelers, woodchoppers, knee-slapping dancers, bell ringers, a brass band and beer served up six mugs at a time by frauleins with brawn.

“This reminds me of a Rams’ tailgate party,” said Booster Club president Judy Matthews, laughing.

Dennis Henderson had only downed one liter of beer when he led the boosters in a robust cheer. “Give me an R!” Henderson yelled. “Now give me an A-M-S! What does that spell?”

“Rams!” screamed the boosters, hoisting their mugs. “Goooo Rams!”

After a first course of noodle soup, the boosters tried their hand at dancing in the isles. Ort and his wife, Ronni, were first on the dance floor, cutting a mean polka. Then Jim invited fellow booster Ron Lais for a spin on the worn parquet. Lais danced for about 30 seconds, then left Ort standing alone on the dance floor. “He’s a lousy dancer,” Lais teased.

“He kept trying to lead!” Jim replied.

It was that kind of night. Before the last song was sung (including a rousing rendition of “Anchors Away”), the boosters had sung happy birthday to Henderson, Joel Vest, Dee Crockett, Carroll Connet and Bart Wade. All were celebrating their birthdays during the trip.

And they had dined on pigs’ knuckles with style. “Remember,” Jim Brand told his tablemates, “this is pigs’ knuckles, not pigs’ feet. You don’t have to worry about the hooves.”

“Isn’t this great?” asked Boomer Steeman, celebrating his 30th anniversary with his wife, Judy. “Everybody is so happy! It’s hard to pull that off in Orange County, unless maybe you’re at a Rams game.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the boosters--many of them still sporting their Rams blue and gold (right down to Joan Ann Faria’s gold Rams-head ring with sapphire eyes)--had boarded mega-buses to tour Munich, the capital of Bavaria and Germany’s third largest city after Berlin and Hamburg. There was a stop at the English Garden, built 201 years ago to imitate England’s Hyde Park.

“If you go there, you might see nude people strolling on the paths,” warned Monica, a thirtysomething tour guide with blunt-cut red hair. “But the police don’t bother with them. They know they’ll leave the park when it gets cold.”

“Oh, swell, “ came a female voice from the back of the bus. “Now I suppose all of our husbands are going to become joggers.”

And there were stops at the site of the 1972 Olympics, and also at the emerald green “artificial hills,” as Monica called them, which were actually piles of rubble from World War II which the German government had covered with grass and planted with shade trees.

The boosters also got to see the beautiful castle Nymphenburg with its swan-covered lake.

But always there was talk of brew.

“This is the kingdom of beer. It is our country’s most beloved sport,” said Monica, adding that the name Munich comes from the word monk, and that it was monks who brewed Germany’s first beers.

“We have 900 breweries in Germany,” Monica added, “one half of all the breweries in the world. And the glasses are so big you can drown yourself or your sorrows in them. Some men here drink like horses--five to six liters at a sitting. They even give beer to babies here.”

Besides the Lowenbrau Brewery, boosters caught glimpses of quaint residences with window boxes spilling scarlet geraniums as they rode around downtown Munich.

And there were the store windows crammed with pretzels the size of small kites and tidy gardens ablaze with purple hydrangeas.

The boosters broke into applause when they spotted Old Glory waving atop the United States Embassy. Monica seemed to have a lump in her throat when she said: “Here, you are in a once-destroyed country.”

When the bus reached the center of Munich, a parade booming with the sound of tubas marched by. “There goes Georgia!” joked Dennis Henderson, enjoying the trip with his wife, Elaine.

Even with all the touristy distractions, Rams owner Georgia Frontiere was never far from the minds of the boosters. The Rams were the reason they were here and believing that the Rams were going to scalp the Kansas City Chiefs on Saturday, wouldn’t it be just like Georgia to stage a parade?