Wednesday Fred and Janet arrived for a visit. We're excited to have them here. Since I was working Wednesday and they were exhausted from flying for 20 hours, we took it easy. But yesterday - Thursday - we headed out to the Volksfest!The Volksfest is what the festival is called in Stuttgart. In Munich the same festival is called Octoberfest. When I read online that things opened at 1100 and there were shops and rides we decided to just go early. We got there around 1230 and walked around a bit checking out the stalls. In addition, it had carnival type rides, haunted houses, big drays with the horses pulling the beer (you can seee it in this picture), and the huge tents where the beer drinking happens.
We walked a bit, then went into the first tent we came to. It was pretty empty, but we figured that was just 'cause it was so early. So we ordered our 1Litre beers and some lunch. you can see the beers and some of our food in this picture. The entertainment was two guys on the stage that switched between keyboards, accordians, trumpets, and more. While kind of neat, we headed out after finishing our beers and food to see what else was going on. There were some rides that looked really scarry, and if I had been in the mood for them, they would have been lots of fun. There were other huge beer tents, these with real bands and lots of people - some of the people already standing
on the ta
bles. We realized then that we must have been in the geriatric tent to start out with! The only good thing to say about the tent we went to was the food and beer were really good.
So we settled in to have some fun - and fun was had. We drank beer, spoke to the Germans at the table with us, took turns walking around and did some shopping (I bought this blue scarf), stood on the tables, sang, toasted, drank some more. It was a blast. At about 9 p.m. we had enough and headed home. The good thing about starting early was we didn't have to worry about leaving while the trains were still running. Definitely worth going to.
P.S. Check out my new haircut...
