One of the great things about Germany is its plethora of festivals throughout the year.
We have gone to three big festivals and one tiny festival in the last month alone.
The first big one we went to was the Rheingau Wine Festival in Wiesbaden, which occurs for 10 days every August. It’s called “the longest wine bar in the world”, where over 200,000 bottles of wine are consumed each year. This festival began in 1976 with 33 wine stands and has grown to over 100 wine stands, most of which sell wine from the Rheingau region. There are also food stands and 3 different music stages.
In case you’re wondering what the Rheingau region is, it’s one of 13 wine regions in Germany. The area where we live is part of the Rheingau region, which is mainly known for Riesling wine.
And in case you’re wondering about Wiesbaden, it’s the capital of the German state of Hessen (Hesse in English).
We took public transportation to the festival and saw this sign at the Wiesbaden train station. Signs like this make me laugh because a) we’re in Germany and they just stuck this English phrase on the sign and b) nobody cares if you have a big sign with the word “shit” on it for everyone to see.
I didn’t actually take too many photos at this festival, mainly because we were too busy enjoying the wine and also holding our own personal “best mullet” contest. Which one do you think is better? This one?
Or this one?
Check out this great service! They have cute boys walking around with giant dispensers on their back which contain cold drinking water that they give out for free.
This poor soul was clearly overserved way too early in the day.
We spent several hours at the festival consuming one or more (I won’t say how many) bottles of wine with some friends and enjoyed the beautiful day.
The next weekend we went to the European Elvis Festival, a very small festival in Bad Nauheim that also takes place each August. It started back in 2002.
Elvis Presley was in the United States Army in Germany from 1958 from 1960. While he was here, he lived in Bad Nauheim for a bit while he was stationed in nearby Friedberg. It was at a party in his home in Bad Nauheim where he first met his future wife, Priscilla. Priscilla’s father was actually stationed in Wiesbaden, home of the wine festival you just read about.
Here is one of the many banners they had hanging around town. Man, Elvis was one good-looking dude in his Army years, wasn’t he?
Here is one of the many banners they had hanging around town. Man, Elvis was one good-looking dude in his Army years, wasn’t he?
Here’s an Elvis shrine.
There is even a square in the town named after Elvis (“Platz” means “square”).
This sign at the square tells you the names of the two hotels where Elvis lived briefly after arriving in Bad Nauheim. It then tells you the address – Goethestrasse 14 – of the house where he lived after the hotel stays. You can also find the address on Wikipedia. I’m sure the current owners love that.
We didn’t have tickets to see any of the festival performers, which included members of Elvis’ original band. So, we just walked around and checked out the awesome fans dressed in 50s style clothing.
Some of the fans also sported 50s-style hairdos which was quite interesting to see, especially on the men. We also enjoyed looking at the vintage cars on display.
I just love when German stores have amusing signs in English. This one was in the window of a liquor store.
Here is Elvis’ former residence in Bad Nauheim.
This structure is called a graduation tower, which you can read about if you click here. This one had a sign on it calling it an Inhalatorium. The concept is that you’re supposed to walk through and/or on top of the structure (you have to pay to do this) and breathe in the air that is made more beneficial by the brushwood, mineral salts and water. This structure had benches outside where you could also sit and breathe and enjoy the benefits.
What you are seeing on the outside of the walls there is the brushwood. Here is a close-up of the brushwood, and if you look carefully you can make out droplets of water.
Before leaving the area, we drove over to Ray Barracks, which is where Elvis was stationed in Friedberg. It’s been closed for a few years now and is just sitting empty.
The weekend after the Elvis Festival we went to another big festival. This time it was the Regensburger Dult in Regensburg.
The Dult takes place twice a year, once in May and once in August/September. We had visited Regensurg on a trip to Germany before we moved here but had never heard of the Dult until a coworker, whose wife is from Regensburg, invited us to meet them there one weekend in August. We were there for the first night of the festival, which runs for 17 days.
If you’re wondering about Regensburg, it’s a city in the German state of Bayern (Bavaria in English) located where the Danube and Regen rivers meet.
This young fraulein made it to the top and rang a bell and was met with lots of cheering.
Here is Sean enjoying himself in the beer tent.
The guy in the front, right-hand side is my coworker. Next to him is his brother-in-law. Behind my co-worker is Sean and next to Sean is the brother-in-law’s coworker, Klaus.
Sean says his life is now complete because he got to drink beer in Germany with a German guy named Klaus.
Sean and I went back to the fair the next afternoon because we hadn’t seen anything other than the beer tent the previous evening.
At every festival we’ve been to here, we’ve seen some kind of American-themed stand. Here you have the Statue of Liberty asking you to come play “American Sceeball” (yes, that’s how it was spelled on the sign) with her.
I thought this was very clever. They took these cars off a little kiddie ride and had them next to a refreshment stand so you could sit in them and enjoy your food and/or drink. Here is Sean demonstrating the concept.
Here is another thing you will see at almost every festival: Dude in a Dirndl. Usually it’s a bachelor party and the Dude in the Dirndl is the groom-to-be.
The first time I ever saw the word Schmuck on a sign like this was, in fact, on our first trip to Regensburg several years ago. We had stumbled across a small fair and seen a booth like this and thought whaaa? Turns out Schmuck is the German word for jewelry. Having grown up in New York City, I’d only heard schmuck used as an insult, not a noun. As an insult, it basically means – to be polite – an idiot.
I don’t know why it’s taken me all this time to look up how a word for jewelry came to mean a word for “idiot”, but according to Wikipedia this is the explanation: The German word Schmuck means “jewelry, adornments”; the equivalent in Yiddish is schmock or shmock. In German the pejorative “schmuck” would be Schmock, closer to the original Yiddish word. The transition of the word from meaning “jewel” to meaning “penis” is related to the description of a man’s genitals as “the family jewels.”
There you have it.
Anyway, all these years later it still mildly amuses me every time I see the word on a sign.
After seeing the fair in the daytime, we took a walk into the old town. We had to cross a bridge over the Danube and here is a view of the river with the cathedral in the background.
A lot of bridges over here have “love locks” on them, which are padlocks that have the name of a couple engraved or written on them. In addition to the names, sometimes a date or a quote or something is also engraved/written on the lock. After affixing the padlock to the bridge, the couple throws away the key to show that their love cannot be broken. The bridge we walked over to cross the Danube was no exception and had lots of locks.
We couldn’t quite figure out the meaning behind this lock, though.
Here is a view of the Stone Bridge across the Danube, built between 1135 and 1146. It still amazes me that structures this old are not only still standing, but are still in use.
The low, green-ish color building you see is the Wurstküche (meaning: sausage kitchen), which is the oldest restaurant in Germany. If you want a sausage while you’re in Regensburg, this is the place to go. If you want anything else to eat, you’re out of luck because all they serve is sausages – about 6,000 of them a day.
On our walk back to the hotel that evening, we were treated to this nice view of some of the Dult rides reflected in the water.
The last festival covered in this post was the one we went to on Friday the 13th in September, called the Bad Dürkheim Wurstmarkt. Although Wurstmarkt means “sausage market”, in reality it’s actually the biggest wine festival in Germany.
In case you’re wondering about Bad Dürkheim, it’s a spa town located in the German state of Rhineland Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate in English). You’ll read more about spa towns in a minute.
We got to the festival at about 2:30 in the afternoon and were both kinda hungry, so we got some Reibekuchen, which is a yummy kind of potato pancake. It’s also called a Kartoffelpuffer (Kartoffel is the German word for potato). Sean got his with applesauce (Apfelmus in German), which is a common topping for them.
It warmed my heart to know that Claudia Schiffer fans are alive and well in Germany.
Remember earlier when you read about the Regensburger Dult and how it’s common to see American-themed stands at festivals in Germany? Here’s one at the Bad Dürkheim festival.
Personally I like German ice cream better.
And remember the graduation tower that you read about earlier from Bad Nauheim? Here’s the one in Bad Dürkheim.
You may have noticed that both of those towns have the word “Bad” in them. The word means bath and when you see that word in the name of a German town, it means it is or was a spa town, which you can read about if you click here.
Americans will probably find this odd, but at German festivals you will see stands like this that sell liquor and tobacco.
Yup, you can walk right up and buy a shot and a pack of cigarettes and drink and smoke in public to your heart’s content.
Here’s a similar stand (a schnapps booth) where the 4 adults were doing shots while the little boy ate his ice cream or whatever.
And here is another thing that may surprise Americans. Here you have an innocent little bumper car ride, right?
Now in case you missed it, take a look at the top of the ride. See that drawing of the naked couple up there? I don’t even want to think about why that’s on a bumper car ride.
We finally chose a spot to sit, which was in the base of a structure built to look like a windmill. Even though this is a wine festival, Sean decided to drink beer. I decided on Weißweinschorle, which is basically a white wine spritzer but better. And of course it’s served in a pint glass. You can also get a pint of just straight wine at the festival.
We had several drinks and enjoyed the people-watching at the festival. We headed back to the hotel at about 9:30, but by that time we’d been at the festival for about 7 hours so it was enough. We had a nice view of the festival from the little balcony of our hotel room.
We’ll never get to go to every festival in Germany, but we’ll have fun trying!
