My First Festivals

The past weekend has been a packed one, Friday and Saturday evening was spent in the company of Uwe's friends two of whom were celebrating birthdays and Saturday itself was spent doing my second German oral exam and driving about doing some furniture shopping.  We finally found a suitable Schriebtisch in an amusingly named store called Hofmeisters, which of course meant I had to bring up the old "all Germans are obsessed with the Hoff" chestnut.  Which in itself is quite topical as the Hoff himself believes he is the one solely responsible for toppling the Berlin Wall, and today is a bank holiday in Germany commemorating the reunification.  To be fair he did have a pretty flashy jacket on when he played on the Berlin Wall back in 1989.

Yesterday we visited the Pumpkin Festival in Ludwigsburg, I have been itching to visit since we went to the Blühendes Barock in July 2010, that day was in the middle of a summer heatwave and it was about 36°C, absolutely scorching! I had seen a leaflet for the Pumpkin Festival and thought it looked amazing in a kitschy surreal kind of way, and the bonus is that being held in Autumn it would be a much more reasonable temperature (unless, like this year, it happens to be a freakishly hot heatwave when it should be about 12°C, but is instead 26°C!!).  I had read the lovely Laurel's post on last years festival and last week she posted her review of this years and with this theme being Dinosaurs I knew I had to see it for myself!

The place was absolutely rammed with visitors, it was hard to take pictures because of how many people were there, and even in the areas of the vast Gardens which were not pumpkinified one could hardly move.

That's right Pumpkinosaurs!!

The Pumpkinasaurus Rex was my fave.

After looking around for a while we were delighted to see a hut selling ice lollies, but as we approached the counter they closed, so instead I took a picture of an amusingly named icy German treat:

Just to prove my sense of humour has not moved on much since I was a toddler...

Something I found even more amusing than Dinosaurs made from Pumpkins and an Ice Lolly called Bum Bum, was the children's entertainment area, no bouncy castles or noisy fairground type attractions needed here! Pop up a wooden hut area, cordon it off and add some bails of hay and let the kids chuck it at each other, brilliant!  It looked really fun and I was tempted to join in :D

I wouldn't want to be the one cleaning up after that!

After a tip off from Laurel we sat down for some refreshments and I had some of the Pumpkin wine, which does sound wrong but is in fact very, very right!  I promptly visited the shop and bought a bottle to take home, which sadly I have already finished while catching up with the last two weekends of X Factor.  I did want to bring home some of the wonderful varieties of Pumpkins on offer, but towards the end I was so hit I couldn't be bothered to queue up again but I did take some nice pictures.

Sure to make someone some lovely soup one day.

Originally I had pencilled in the Göppingen Weinfest for Sunday, but I decided to let fate decide - okay the people on Facebook - and oddly enough they chose Pumpkins.  However i had forgotten that it was a Bank Holiday and we could do both, so to honour the people who had voted in my Poll we did that on Sunday and today we visited the final day of the Weinfest. I had my first taste of Zwiebelkuchen, which is a quiche-type thing but instead of pastry the case is a savoury sponge cake kind of affair.  It was a gorgeous day drinking cold wines in the Sun accompanied by a live Volksmusik band, perfect!

Bizzler!!

I had been hoping to find some Federweißer as recommended by the delightful Frau Dietz but we were out of luck, talking of luck the Frau herself has an exam coming up so send her some happy thoughts!

GOOD LUCK FRAU DIETZ!!