This weekend in Germany Europe’s largest wine festival took place in Bad Durkheim, we decided we had better go and check it out. Because we have never had great luck with parking, we decided we should embrace a European life style and take the train. Apparently so did half of the American’s stationed here, because when we showed up at the train station the ticket machine lines were long and not moving, turns out on weekend the German who runs the ticket window, who we had been assured would help us purchase the best tickets for us, was off. My husband, whose award shelves boast all the great things he can do with satellites, does not know how to use a bahn (train) ticket machine. We decided to postpone our train departure until we were certain we could purchase tickets for our return trip, if (and this was becoming a big if) we ever did get to the Bad Durkheim station. We loaded back into the car and left the bigger station and its crowds for our small local train station, which is not so much a station as it is just a ticket machine and bench. There at the Obermohr stop after we had spent as much time as we needed reading and starting over on the machine, I was able to purchase tickets to Bad Durkheim for the next day and I was confident we could use the machine to purchase ticket to home when the time came.
The festival was less festival and more carnival. It was almost exactly what you would expect at a state fair, there was no wine tasting and buying bottles like we expected. Instead there was heavy drinking of wine and purchasing it by the HUGE glass, these were more like beer steins and less like dinky wine glasses. But like a state fair the food section was good, Sam got to enjoy a ½ meter long bratwurst. There were only a few differences in the way Germany does their “festivals” and the way we do our “State fairs”, here in Germany I didn’t see any livestock. No tent to see the baby calves or arena to watch the pigs run in circle, giving the audience the impression that they are actually racing. Besides the lack of live animals at the wine festival when you buy a drink, coke, beer, wine or the popular Fanta, it comes in a glass. An actually glass cup! When you purchase your drink you pay a deposit and receive a chip with your full actual glass cup of refreshing liquid, then when you have finished enjoying your drink you return the actually glass cup to the counter with the plastic chip and you receive your deposit back. Turned out having glass cups was not the best idea after people had enjoyed a tumbler full of wine and the cup tumbled off the table. Ooops!
The festival was less festival and more carnival. It was almost exactly what you would expect at a state fair, there was no wine tasting and buying bottles like we expected. Instead there was heavy drinking of wine and purchasing it by the HUGE glass, these were more like beer steins and less like dinky wine glasses. But like a state fair the food section was good, Sam got to enjoy a ½ meter long bratwurst. There were only a few differences in the way Germany does their “festivals” and the way we do our “State fairs”, here in Germany I didn’t see any livestock. No tent to see the baby calves or arena to watch the pigs run in circle, giving the audience the impression that they are actually racing. Besides the lack of live animals at the wine festival when you buy a drink, coke, beer, wine or the popular Fanta, it comes in a glass. An actually glass cup! When you purchase your drink you pay a deposit and receive a chip with your full actual glass cup of refreshing liquid, then when you have finished enjoying your drink you return the actually glass cup to the counter with the plastic chip and you receive your deposit back. Turned out having glass cups was not the best idea after people had enjoyed a tumbler full of wine and the cup tumbled off the table. Ooops!
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