Stuttgart

161. Cannstatter Wasen

Are you ready to join me for the Cannstatter Wasen in Stuttgart? It's considered to be the second largest beer festival, only behind the Munich Oktoberfest. And it's even the biggest fair if you define size by the number of carousels, rollercoasters and carney booths (is that offensive?!). It took place for the first time in 1818. Please put on your Lederhosen, and let's go.


First of all there are these huge beer tents, where you can get "Hähnchen" (roasted chicken), "Schweinshaxen" (pork hock), and of course beer, beer, beer and beer.
Since I live in a big wine-growing area, there are also some tents where wine is the regular drink.


Here are some "Hähnchen" and "Schweinshaxen".


In the tent you don't drink your beer silently. There's "Volksmusik" (terrible German folk music), and many people are dancing on the tables. If you look closely, you can see them dance on the table. And by the way, this picture was taken in the early afternoon. You should see it at night ...


If you don't like chicken or pork, you can also have "Kartoffelpuffer" (potato fritter with apple sauce), "Dampfnudeln" (yeast dumpling filled with prunes and served with lots of powdered sugar, ground poppy seeds and melted butter), "Maultaschen" (Swabian ravioli), or "Steckerlfisch" (smoked fish that gets smoked on a stick).


Of course there are many nontypical dishes like pizza, hamburger, corn-on-the-cob. One thing, that isn't typical for this area, but has been a part of the fair for a very long time is the French village.


In the French village you can get many French delicacies, like snails, tarte flambee, and much more. And of course wine. Unfortunately nobody joined me for a French kiss.

The blue thing in the next picture is the "Fruchtsäule", a wooden column decorated with fruit, 26 meters high and weighing 3.5 tons. Every few years, a new fruit column with a new design is established. It's a kind of Thanksgiving symbol.


These hearts made of gingerbread are also very typical. They have things like "I love you" written on them, and boys usually give them to their girlfriends as a proof of their love. However, right before I came out, I once have been forced to buy one of those for a friend, she insisted. If she knew ...


Every year there's this amazing silhouette artist who cuts pictures of people out of black paper. And he's really unbelievably fast, accurate and detailed.

And of course there are many carousels, rollercoaster and booths.


This year there's this Psycho again. It's one of the hounted houses on the fair. My friend Udo and I were in there some years ago, and we both were very scared and afraid, so we held each other very close. Suddenly we realized that everybody outside could see us through one of the windows. It was a very funny situation. Oh dear, we were such pansies.

Here's another device where you can mix the chicken and the beer in your stomach.

And another one.


If you haven't thrown up yet, you may want to consider this bungee-thingy where two people sit in this small sphere that is attached to two rubber bands, and gets shot in the air. I like those things, unfortunately it's very expensive. Alas, it's the only thing I haven't tried on this fair so far.

Some dinosaurs. As if they were still interesting ...

And a rollercoaster with a Bavarian cashier booth. Soooo cheesy. Well, it fits to the rest.

And the world's largest portable Ferris wheel.

Something where you get your face washed (if it's greasy after you had some chicken), after the ride was over they all were wet to the bones. And to dry your hair again, you also get some loops. I suppose more than you wanted.

Another "scary" hounted house.

Of course there's much more, but I see that you're already yawning. Ok, let's go home ...


Thanks for joining me.

If you're going to Stuttgart, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

This will be the last post about my city and/or my hikes for I while, I promise. But today my roomie has joined for the walk. He saw the pictures I had taken yesterday, and he felt like walking with me today. He got infected, he already told me to join me again tomorrow. So today it wasn't my regular walk again, we went to the Bismarck Tower and a little bit further to a park that we've usually been visiting by bus.

Yesterday when I arrived at the Bismarck Tower I suddenly had a feeling like being in San Francisco. It reminded me very much. But I didn't tell anybody about that feeling. However, Jimmi wrote in a comment that it reminds him little bit of San Francisco. That made two of us. Funnily enough, when Sven arrived up there, he said, "well, this is a little bit like San Francisco." So, no doubt about that anymore. This is him and me in front of the tower. This was taken by autotimer. It actually consists of two pictures put together (bottom half and top half).


Then we jumped into our time machine and went back some years. We arrived at a nostalgic fair. It was very crowded and many children were running around. Strangely enough, there's no child on this picture.


Here's another part of the park. Please mind the horse, it's the icon of my city.


Well, here's the icon of Stuttgart. But you already knew that. This emblem is familiar to you, it's also on the hood of your Porsche, because Porsche is from Stuttgart. What? You don't have a Porsche? Well, ok, your Mercedes is from Stuttgart as well.


Ok, back to the park. Each year they have hundrets of different dalia. I like them very much, they're colorful and just nice. My roomie and I enjoy them every year. It's like a jungle of flowers.


Those are really high. I'm 6'0", but some are even higher.


In this park there's also this funny tower. It looks like a double helix.

Morning Walk

Ok, so here's another boring post. When I woke up this morning I thought it's an excellent day. It was warm, sunny, no clouds. I've decided to take my cam with me during my daily walk. So here are some pictures. This is my neighborhood, it's where my walk is starting.


This is at the bottom of the Killesberg, the "mountain" I'm going up every day.


Just a little bit further up that hill there are railway tracks. They're kind of a border between the busy city and the quiet sub-urban area. Above these tracks there are only few cars driving. It's very silent and peaceful. This picture is taken right after the railroad bridge, you can see the bridge in the mirror (along with me).


This street (called "Herdweg") goes straight up that hill, it's a little bit steep, but I like walking up there very much. And there are some nice buildings.


It doesn't look that steep in the pictures, but it really is.


And a look down the hill after I've arrived at the top.


Up that hill there's an eccentric private school, they're doing Waldorf Education. In fact, this kind of school was founded here in Stuttgart. I think it's a little bit strange, even the road signs look different in that area. For example they have another font that doesn't have right angles or parallel lines, because they say right angles and parallel lines don't exist in nature. One thought that always came into my mind was, "what angles do the trees in their universe have when they can't grow straight up, and one tree can't have the same angle as anotherone, because they can't be parallel. But I was surprised to find this weird area up there. Ok, there are still parallel lines, but no right angles :-)


Just a little bit further there's a Bismarck Tower. Bismarck Towers are a unique German monument-phenomenon to honor the ex-chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898). The towers were built on four continents (Australia, South America, Africa and Europe). 172 of 240 Bismarck-towers, including new discovered towers, still remained in Germany, Austria, France, the Czech Republic, Russia, Poland and Chile. On special days like Bismarck's birthday they made a big fire on the top of that tower that could be seen from far away.


But from up there you have an excellent view over the neighbouring cities.


And over my city as well.


I tried to find my house from up there, but I wasn't able to recognize any building from this point. About two miles to the west there's another very nice viewpoint. Funnily I can recognize everything from there.


So, this is already the way back.


This is the other viewing point I was mentioning above. I also took a picture of me. The Guy once said after a very exhausting trip in the Swiss mountains, "You might feel like shit, but you look great".


There were also some lizards and I took some pictures of them as well.


Ok, and this is my neighborhood again, I'm back at home.


Thanks for joining me for this walk. I hope you had nice three hours. Oh wait, I hope it didn't take three hours to read all that stuff, but it took more than 3 hours to take.

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