Today was the third day of the Arnstadt Stadtfest so I took the train up there to check it out. The first frustrating thing was that the ticket machine at the train station doesn't take money, only EC cards - which I don't have one of. Luckily, a nice guy explained to me that you can buy tickets on the train in the machine there - and luckily that one takes cash. Arnstadt is about the same size as Ilmenau, but I think it had a little bit more going on during medieval times. It has a castle (or at least the ruins of a castle) and some nice churches. According to Wikipedia, Arnstadt is one of the oldest towns in Thuringia and is known as the Gateway to the Thuringian Forest. Johann Sebastian Bach also grew up in the area - his family lived here for generations. He supposedly wrote the famous Toccata and Fugue in d minor here. There's a trail that connects Ilmenau and Arnstadt and not surprisingly it is called the "From Bach to Goethe" trail. It's 28 km long though. I wasn't quite up to it today.
Street fairs are really funny - they are always exactly the same no matter where you are. They always have the same crappy stuff for sale, have the same type of entertainment, and mostly people just go to eat food. The big difference between the Arnstadt fest and any festival in America is that there are a LOT more beer tents/stalls here. There was one guy who sang along to American country music for four hours (non-stop). Another guy played the accordion. He was up on stage having a grand old time, but I couldn't figure out who was singing along. It definitely wasn't him, and it wasn't a recording. Finally I noticed a guy with a microphone sitting down drinking at one of the beer tents. In between sips of his beer, he was providing the vocal portion of the music.
The most amusing part was the big competition for strongest man and woman in Arnstadt (if not Thuringen, Germany and the world). The contestants all had shirts that said "Trabiheben 2007", because they were lifting not weights, but that favorite old car of East Germany, the Trabant, or Trabi as it is more familiarly called. This special renovated Trabi was outfitted with a bar coming out from underneath the trunk, so that the aspiring strong men/women could lift the back end of the Trabi off the ground. Since all the contestants could lift the Trabi, they then added more and more weight to the trunk of the car. Apparently last year's winner lifted around 485 kgs (1,069 lbs). I didn't stay too long to watch this because Germans are too damn tall and I couldn't see a thing. But it was probably pretty cool.
Yesterday I took a little hike through the woods around Ilmenau and found the luge track. Ilmenau is the WORLD CAPITAL of luge. More Olympic champions have come from Ilmenau then anywhere else. This is a random thing to be famous for - but still pretty cool. They have a summer luge thing - sort of like the alpine slide at Bromley and the kids were sliding down on it. Next weekend is the FIL Sommerrodel Championship something or other - aka world class luge competition right here in sleepy little Ilmenau, Himmelblau. Stay tuned for pictures - it's supposed to be quite the party.
No comments:
Post a Comment