Germany: I Am More German Than You: April 2013

Every year in Stuttgart, there is a Spring celebration called the Fruehlingsfest, also called "Wasen" here for some reason.
Fruehling is the word for Spring, and Fest, well hopefully is pretty obvious, it's a festival or party.
So, for the most part, imagine Oktoberfest, but in the Spring time.
It's ridiculous!!!
The whole festival takes place in a neighborhood of Stuttgart that is near the Mercedes and Porsche museums, called Bad Canstatt (bod con-shtaht). [note that "Bad" does not refer to the English word "bad" but rather to the English word "bath" or more modernly interpreted, "spa." Bad Canstatt is an area with natural spring water, and therefore there are lots of spas]
It's super easy to get to and from the Fruehlingsfest, it's about a block away from the Bad Canstatt Hauptbahnhof (main train station) which you can get to directly from the Stuttgart Hbf. That means for me and my friends who live in the same campus that I do, we just hop on the train we normally take to the Stuttgart Hbf, and stay on for an extra stop.

The first time I went to the Fruehlingsfest was Tuesday the 22nd. I was arriving directly from the stadtmitte campus, and I didn't have time to change into my dirndl, which was somewhat disappointing, since it's the ONLY time of year I will be here when people wear dirndls and lederhosen throughout the day.
I arrived at the Fest at dusk, and planned to meet a group of 20 or so international students in one of the beer tents. I had heard that Fruehlingsfest is huge, but it didn't occur to me that that meant it's roughtly the size of a full theme park, which just as many rides and vendors.
My goodness, there were multi-colored lights EVERYWHERE, and fun houses, and spinning rides, and a ferris wheel in the distance, and also 3 very tall towers for rides of in the distance.
The first building that I actually noticed in full was what I assume was a corn-on-the-cob selling stand. I surmise so because the building/stand was in the shape of a giant smiling corn cob. It was frightening.
After a few minutes of walking around mesmerized, I met up with one of my friends, who showed me which beer tent everyone was in.
My goodness- the beer tent! Each one is a long rectangle, with 4 entrances, one at each corner. The middle of the tent is filled with rows of long wooden tables and matching benches. I however could barely see anyone these due to the fact that 90% of the people there were standing on the benches, holding masses of beer and dancing. A good 60% wearing dirndls and lederhosen. The group of international students had claimed about 3 tables for ourselves at the back of the hall, which seemed to be a bit less chaotic, as we had some more space than those tables at the front of the hall, where people were crammed in to be closer to the stage where music was playing. I believe there was a DJ for the night, because the most annoying club music was playing the whole time. The last 2 songs were "Wonderwall" and "We are Young." American songs of course, which everyone made fun of me for not liking, being the one American there and all.
However, it was a good time- except for when one of the Scottish girls was really drunk and slipped off the bench, pushing me down, and a minute later nearly burned me with her cigarette. (I was extremely aggravated, but always polite)
Unfortunately, they close down the whole Fest at 11pm every week night, and so by 11:15, all of the beer tent workers were forcing everyone to leave. I do wish however, that they would close the beer tents earlier than everything else, because walking through the Festival to the exit was mighty creepy when you are surrounded by rides and shops that are all shut down, with no lights on.
Just imagine walking through a carnival at night. I think that's the setting for a fair amount of horror movies!
But we were a big group of people, so no worries. We made it safely back to the train station, and crammed on the Sbahn back to Uni campus.

My second visit to fruehlingsfest was 2 days later, on the 25th, to celebrate my Finish friend eero's birthday. We got there around 8pm, which gave me enough time to change into my dirndl and braid my hair. I met my Spanish friend Edu at the sbahn station here, and we went together to the Bad Canstatt station, where we met up with Eero, and another Finish friend, Henry, and his girlfriend who is Swedish-Finish. The beer tent was so croweded and boiling hot when we arrived, that I couldn't stand to be inside for more than 15 minutes. Luckily, we were able to find a perfect table outside in the beer garten, that was close enough to the tent entrance that we could hear the music, and turned out to be in the corner where all the waiters and waitresses were taking their breaks, and so we were served very quickly.

All the beer tents serve delicious traditional schwaebish Foods, in addition to beer, but I wasn't quite hungry and also a majority of the dishes contain meat.
For example, if you have a large group of people and would like to reserve a table for everyone, it costs 34 Euro per person, But each person gets 3 Masse beer (normally 8,80 a piece) and a rotisserie chicken! They also have a lunch deal where for 6,50 you can get a half liter of beer (1/2 Mass) and half a chicken, or half of some other entrée!
So in a couple weeks, I will definitely be returning for that!
But on this visit, I had my Mass of Hefeweizen, and we sat around for about 3 hours talking, mostly in German, since the finish guys, edu and I were in the same German intensive course together.

At one point we were discussing how we all know that beer maids can carry ridiculous amounts of Masse at one time, and so we were all trying to pick up 2 or 3 at once ( all 5 of us had one). Our waitress happened to see us discussing this, came over to our table, told us to line up the glasses so the handles were all together, and then EFFORTLESSLY, she picked up all 5 full Masse, which I was told total approximately 12 kg! (fyi that's over 25 lbs). And she didn't even look super buff or anything! Just a lady with a small to average build!
She was also really friendly, and when we were leaving for the night, Edu asked if she would be in a picture with him, and she said sure.

Saturday 27.04- 3rd time at Fruehlingsfest:

Since I had already been twice without really exploring the little shop stands, I decided to go to fruehlingsfest for a couple hours during the day to walk around and see the entire fruehlingsfest instead of spending the whole time in a beer tent. It turned out that there is only one souvineer shop, which is closed off to the public and you order what you want to buy at a window, and pay for it, and the teller person retrieves the item for you.

There is also only one dirndl and lederhosen shop, which had decent prices, but nothing that I was really wowed by- specifically no pretty green dirndls like I want for the next dirndl I buy.

Anyway, some of the stuff I saw today was too wacky to describe in paragraph form, and thankfully I took lots of pictures of my walk through the fest. ...

A little mermaid themed ride. This creepy statue is apparently Ariel, with a sign that says something like "do not touch"

A typical food stand. Look Tyler- they sell Currywurst!

It was very cloudy, but here's a look down one of the streets of the fest.

chocolate covered fruit on a stick!!! I was so excited and it was very tasty. German chocolate is amazing!

A scary haunted house ride, with a giant skull that has blinking eyes that light up at night. Also a king kong and dead pirate thing climbing a rope???

There is one area that is designed to look super old and traditional German-like. It's my favorite part of the whole fest. Everything is wooden and there was a polka band!

This is a cute little bar serving wine

This is a carousel bar!!! I really wanted to hop on, but there were tons of people, and I didn't want to drink anything, so it would have been pointless, but it's so cool. In case you are wondering, it moves extremely slowly, so I doubt anyone would get motion sickness.

I was trying to take a picture of this very unusual wooden tent structure thing, with a Pocahontas Grandmother-Willow type tree trunk face on it, but this guy walking by apparently really wanted to be in the picture!

Another interesting wooden shelter structure thing. This one had a wagon attached to the ceiling and some creepy mannequins on the rafters as well.

A super cute, friendly looking wood carved forest man.

gnomes on the ceiling! I ain't lying, it's just a matter o time.

(see what I did there?)

A beer garten!

Ummmm.... and then there's this.

I was walking along, and saw this from across the way. I thought "that cannot possibly be what I think that says" but sure enough...... Germans are very open about things. Cultural differences! But at least they are trying to be responsible, I suppose?

One of 3 beer tents/shelters. This one has a large outdoor beer garten as well. With a long line of people waiting for it to open!

Here's a ride called Big Bamboo, complete with a pool of water and a small fountain at the front! It's fun. It says so right on the sign!

On of the cutest food stands I've ever seen!

I thought this king of food stand only existed in games like roller coaster tycoon or Sim theme park.

I was wrong, and I am so happy about that! This is a fruit stand shaped like a pineapple (ananas in German)

One of the 2 roller coasters!

Gingerbread house - knusperhaus. Selling lebkuchen, candies and magenbrot hearts.

The ferris wheel!

Another side of the fest. Here's the second roller coaster, and an awesome looking ride that is like a see-saw and a windmill mixed together.

Log ride!

Italian food (aka Pizza) imbissstand

Again, I never knew these things existed in real life! It's just like the hamburger stands in the computer game Roller Coaster Tycoon. I am so excited! I have to try one of these hamburgers next week. I don't care how much it is or whether I actually enjoy it, but I have to buy one because of how rad this food stand is!!!

Another street of the fest

Giant cloud of cotton candy (aka zuckerwatte = sugar cotton)

Yet another street! With some crazy ride at the end. Here you can also see another Italian food stand. It's the one that looks like the Tower of Pisa incase you were confused.

Airplane ride! I have no idea what the actual ride is, but there is this giant tower with an airplane at the top.

And of course, you can't have an airplane without a model air traffic tower and a mannequin air traffic controller guy!

Tuesday May 7th- Student Night

Student night at Fruhlingsfest is also "1 bezahlen, 2 trinken" or buy one get one free Mass night! That means, for 8,55 Euro plus a 0,65 fee for the glasses, you get 2 Mass of beer. That's 2 liters. That's a good deal. So naturally a bunch of us went.
I arrived there around 4pm with a couple of friends and we sat in a beer tent for a good couple hours listening to a terrible band play glam rock and American country-ish songs, that I don't like. So eventually we made our way onto the patio of the beer tent where we ended up meeting another 10 or more students from our international group. We ended up staying there just hanging out and finishing our Masse beer until abut 10pm. Good times were had by all. The weather was lovely, and I got to wear my dirndl again! :)

This is an awful group picture. Most of us are not looking at the camera. I was in the middle of either sneezing or saying something, and I think I couple people look (or are) drunk already. However, it's the only group picture I ended up with, so I'm keeping it.

L to R: Nam (Canadian), (guy from Singapore I think), Me, Hugh (Australian), Duygu (Turkish), know idea, (guy from Singapore) [I am terrible at Names]

This band was so bad. MaXxx! there were 6 people. a front man named Christian, a girl bass player named Katy, a guy on drums named Juergen, 2 electric guitars, and a keyboard guy. Oh and there was some girl who changed costumes like 8 times and was their singer for half of their songs.

It was quickly obvious that at fruehlings fest, people really don't care at all about what music is playing. Just as long as there IS music, and there is Beer, young people will be dancing on benches along to the music.