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> Frühlingsfest (Spring Festivals)
Beginning Spring with the Frühlingsfests
The Frühlingsfest is one name for a town's or city's Spring
Festival. Spring festivals are very common as the school year heads toward
its end and the flowers come into full bloom. Certain special events, such
the Wittmontag and Happy Mosel Winefest
celebrations, are peculiar to a specific village. But it seems like all
towns, large and small, ring in the spring in their own special way. And
so, here is a brief montage of four spring festivals or events, each a little
different.
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Walldorf.
In mid-April, we found advertisements for a Frühlingsfest parade in
Walldorf, just a few miles from our house, so we decided to attend.
The day was very gray, rainy at times, but that didn't prevent the crowds
from coming out in full costume. Most of the costumes were of a
medieval nature, like this group here.
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The dominant group of participants were
children, who were broken out by school and class. It seemed like
several area schools were represented -- one had their children carry
flags, another flowers, another pretzels stuck on top of a colored
stick. The objects were color-coded, like the red and green flags
you see here, according to the age group. |
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Nussloch.
Naturally, we took advantage of the Spring Festival held right outside our
house, too. Nussloch's event is called the "Brunnenfest"
or fountain festival, as it takes place on the main square where the
town's fountain resides. While Nussloch's fall festival is loaded
with food and beer tents and music, the Brunnenfest has more of a business
theme -- the town's businesses remained open after hours and on Sunday
(very unusual in Germany).
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Meanwhile, the town square was a forum
for a Saturday night open air concert, and on Sunday it played hosts to
various events such as a fashion show, shown here. (It wasn't a
fashion show in the Milan-catwalk-with-anorexic-babes, this was ordinary
people modeling the newest 'ordinary' outfits, available at local
merchants.) There were plenty of amusement park rides and such as
well. |
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Rastatt.
The city of Rastatt hosts a weekend-long Spring Festival in its
festival grounds just across the Murg River from the old city. The
Spring Festival consisted mostly of amusement park rides and games, with
fireworks slated one of the nights.
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Most of the early attendees were
families, especially with little kids, and groups of teens looking to hang
out. That was the typical pattern at most of the small festivals,
the bigger crowds tended to come out in the later afternoon/early
evenings. |
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Munich.
Munich's Frühlingsfest lasted for over a month, and was about half as
large as the Oktoberfest. In fact, it seemed almost exactly like the
Oktoberfest except for all the beer tents.
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We were there on a Friday with a couple
hours to spare, but as we could not stay late, the festival was sadly
empty. So, we spent our time taking a ferris wheel ride that gave us
some spectacular city views and a good look at the Peterskirche (shown at
upper left here). |
Conclusion text here.
Based on various events in 2004 -- Page last
updated 01 September 2006 --
(C) 2004 Tom Galvin
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