KÜRBISSE! (Pumpkins!)

September 27, 2014
Statues made out of smallish pumpkins and gourds is a fun thing Germans do in the fall.

We have a great park in Kaiserslautern called the Gartenschau, but we just call it the Dinosaur park. It is a huge beautifully landscaped grassy area with lovely gardens of flowers, and a chilly spring running through it.

Also, it has dozens of dinosaur statues throughout the entire thing.

In addition to it being lovely it has a great water feature/splash park, 3 story high slides, sand, swings, music, ropes, rock walls, ping pong tables, mini golf, tennis court, skate park, and tree houses.
Having a season pass allowed us to make several trips between April and October.

And, it just so happened that in October they had several of those pumpkin sculptures.

 

We heard about a Pumpkin Fest in Ludwigsburg. Not terribly close but a doable drive. 

There was this HUGE palace there, of which I know nothing about. 

 
As luck would have it, this pumpkin fest was at a fairy tale park. So among all the pumpkin stands and sculptures there was a ride through a whale, Rapunzel's castle, a giant, and some mazes and fountains.

 

 

 
 

 

It was a pretty cool sight to see! 

They also offered Pumpkin foods such as fries and soup. Although we all LOVE pumpkin, we were a little let down that they didn't taste like pumpkin pie. And they didn't even sell pumpkin pie!

Also, Harry Potter led me to believe that pumpkin juice was awesome. It was not. 

To be fair, this was more like pumpkin soda

The kids both picked out a pumpkin or a gourd before we headed

back home.

On a side note, I took a long route home one time and found this 'honesty system' pumpkin stand. You picked your pumpkin, weighed it, referred to the sign of weight to cost, then put your coins in the little coin box!

Wein Fest! Bad Durkheim Sep 13 2015

So let's take a minute to talk about festivals.
Festivals in America:

• Lame
• Over priced
• Crappy Food
• Rides are just plain suck-tacular

Festivals in Deutschland

• HUGE!
• Food prices are normal!
• Rides that you see at Lagoon/Terrifying
• Really Freaking Cool

We had been to another festival in Kaiserslautern (our county), So when we heard about Wein/Wine Fest in Bad Durkheim we knew we HAD to go.

Sadly, not too many pictures were taken but it was really cool

 

The Rhein, Rudesheim, and oh yeah....a Torture Museum!! Sep 6 2015

The Rhien river is the longest and most important river in Europe. Starting in the Swiss Alps (from a glacier!) and ending in the Netherlands. It was and still is used for transporting. Way back in the day false knights or "robber knights" illegally built castles along its shore to tax those transporting goods.
Most were destroyed in the 30 years war and also burned down by some kind of saint....So there's your history lesson.

We took a ferry from Bingen to Rudeshiem (Rude-es-hime) and toured the city there. They have a famous street that is only about 2 meters wide and is filled with shops and restaurants.

 

We walked through the torture museum - so cool -

 

 

 

 

 

 
 


Also we took the Seilbahn (cable cars) to the top of the "mountain" to Germany's equivalent of the Statue of Liberty, the Niederwald Monument, which was constructed at the beginning of the German empire after the Franco-Prussian war.

It's only about a 30 minute drive from our house, which makes for a quick Saturday excursion.

Ente und Clowns! (Ducks and Clowns) Aug 2014

So, not too far away there is an awesome park with a lovely pond covered lily pads and home to many ducks, and baby ducks. There's also a great playground with a zipline and everything!

 

 

 
Also, after seeing dozens and dozens of posters all over the city for the circus we finally made it to a show!
It included some great acts but the most memorable were the "trained" porcupine and dancing buffalo!