Did you know that pretzels were invented by German monks?
Well that’s one theory, anyway, although most agree that they were invented at some monastery or another in Europe.
The town of Speyer in Germany calls itself a “pretzel town” and they hold a Brezelfest (pretzel festival) every July.
Pretzels are one of my favorite foods so naturally I had to experience the Brezelfest at least once.
Of course a pretzel festival in Germany is really more of a beer festival, and indeed the beer vendors vastly outnumbered the pretzel vendors at the festival.
Sean had the Tipple of the Day, an Eichbaum beer, shortly after we arrived at the fest. Eichbaum is brewed in Mannheim, about 16 miles from Speyer.
The day we went to the festival turned out to be quite rainy so the fest was not crowded at all.
Normally the beer gardens would have been packed, but the day we went there was nobody in them.
Even the indoor beer tent was empty, which is something you rarely see at a German fest.
I liked the pretzels hanging from the ceiling in the tent.
Even the pretzel stands were empty.
Here’s a really good example of why you want to be careful when spelling German words.
That sign was at one of those little shooting games, and “Hier macht schiessen spass” basically means shooting is fun there.
But if you switch the i and the e around in the word “schiessen” to make it “scheissen”, it would mean shit is fun there. At first glance I actually did think the sign said the second thing. Let that be a lesson to you.
This bar was empty too, but there were a couple of people dressed in traditional German lederhosen and dirndls, which I always love to see.
Here is something that always makes me chuckle at German fests.
In the background you can see little kids on a bungee jump type of ride. And right in front of that is a Sex Test game. American parents would have conniption fits if they tried that arrangement in the United States.
Another thing you see a lot of at German festivals is groups of girls or guys all dressed alike.
It’s usually a pretty good indicator that a bachelor or bachelorette party is going on.
We didn’t spend too long at the festival because of the weather, so we headed back towards town.
The Speyer Cathedral shown there is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That was our view of it when we were walking to the festival.
Leaving the festival, we walked a different way and went along the side of the cathedral.
As we approached that sculpture, I said to Sean “I don’t remember seeing this before.”
He said “That’s because we didn’t walk this way earlier.”
I said “No, I mean from the first time we were here.”
He said “We’ve been here before?”
I had to laugh because yes, we had been to Speyer back in October 2011. To be honest, though, we’ve visited so many places in Germany that a lot of them do start to blend together after a while. I couldn’t really blame Sean for not remembering our previous visit but I still showed him the photos when we got back home just to prove I was right. Not that there was ever a doubt.
Back in town, we passed a crowd of people waiting to both participate in and watch a parade.
Once again, you can see people dressed in lederhosen and dirndls. The parade was held to try to set some kind of record of people wearing those outfits. We didn’t stick around to watch the parade though.
To get to the festival, we’d parked at a nearby town and taken the train to Speyer. Not knowing that the weather was going to turn out so badly, we had figured parking would be difficult and that the train would be the easiest option. As it turned out, we probably could have easily parked in town but it was okay.
So, one reason we didn’t watch the parade was because we wanted to get an earlier train.
We passed some beautiful buildings on the way back to the train station.
We also made a detour into little Adenauer-Park where we saw cute ducklings near a water lily pond.
Mama Duck may look otherwise engaged there, but she was keeping a close eye on me to make sure I didn’t get too close to her babies.
On the other side of the pond is a Gothic chapel.
There was some kind of event going on there with everyone dressed all in white. It may have been a communion or confirmation or something but in any case I thought it looked like a nice, secluded, peaceful place to have a wedding.
As you read earlier, festivals attract bachelor parties and we ran into one on the train.
A lot of the groups go around trying to get people to buy things from them as a way of raising drinking money and also embarrassing the bride- or groom-to-be.
I figured the bachelor party on the train wouldn’t bother with us because we’re old, but I was wrong.
They approached us and started giving us their spiel (which, by the way, is the German word for game or play) and I told them we don’t speak German.
The groom-to-be said “That’s okay, we are all educated and we speak English as well.” Of course they do.
They brought out their basket of goodies, which consisted mostly of sex toys and condoms, and proceeded to explain what each one was and how we could use them.
I said “Yes, well, the problem is I already have all of those things.”
They found that very amusing and after much cajoling I finally did agree to buy something.
Yes, I bought a boob pillow from them. No home should be without one.
Hopefully this trip to Speyer was more memorable for Sean than the first one!
