Stuttgart Frühlingsfest

Okay, time to play catch up before I leave for Greece...

The weekend of May 4th and 5th, I got to meet up with some old friends from school in Stuttgart. While we were there, we attended the "more authentic" festival in Germany known as "Frühlingsfest" (spring festival). It's less touristy than Oktoberfest but has all of the festivities that go along with German festivals. Basically, it is a combination of a state fair with the classic fair rides and Oktoberfest with beer tents, dancing, and partying.

I met up with Kylee (she was an ICP student a few years ago) and Joe and Chris (guys from SigEp)! It was great to see all of them because I haven't seen any of them for a long time. We had a table reserved for Saturday night from 4:00pm to 11:00pm, and I have to admit that I was a little bit weary. Could anyone really party for that long? And could these guys do it having just landed in Germany a few hours before?

We met up with some of Kylee's friends from her stay in Germany, some from England and others from Germany, and the partying commenced. My favorite part about German parties is that they love to sing songs and dance and act crazy. I would compare it to a combination of a wedding and a pop concert in the US. One of my favorite songs is "So ein schöner Tag" (such a beautiful day), which has a bunch of dancing motions. Many people dress up in Lederhosen and Dirndl, mostly ironically. Everyone is standing on wooden benches singing and dancing with the motions to swim, jump, and fly!  This is not my video, but it give you an idea of the epicness of the situation! It's a crazy and awesome experience!

Here I met some new friends from England named Rosanna and Bethany and some new friends from Germany named Kristoff and Karolin! It was a fun group to be a part of. We ate dinner in the tent, which consisted of have a chicken and a dinner roll. Typical German food and quite delicious.

We actually stayed until the end of the night dancing and singing to music from both a live band and a DJ, and I'm still amazed that Kylee, Joe, and Chris were able to make it the whole night. Chris looked pretty tired at several points throughout the night, but you're only in Germany for a short amount of time so you might as well live it up! It also amazes me all of the American songs that are big hits in Germany. Some of them know songs that I've never even heard before.


The next day, we explored Stuttgart a little bit and went back to Frühlingsfest to ride some of the rides and eat some fair food, of course! Rosanna was my buddy for this as she and I basically were dragging everyone else around to the different rides. We road the largest and fastest transportable roller coaster (which is awesome, but I think if you need to add qualifiers, it becomes less impressive). At the recommendation of Kylee, we also had to try Feuerwurst ("Firewurst"), which is a spicy bratwurst. It was really quite delicious, although I should not have eaten it in the middle of our riding extravaganza.