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!