Wasen

Nice Horsey

Yvonne was looking around online and read that there had been pictures found in a train station during renovations that were taken during WWII and were of Jews getting onto trains to leave the area and head to Auschwitz. We thought that it would be interesting and informative so we headed there. Unfortunately we didn’t know exactly where it was and so we had to walk around and talk to several people who all thought it was in different places. We eventually came to a field where there were a bunch of people moving gravel around and cleaning up an area outside and saw that there were pictures in the park they were cleaning up. It turns out that they were not old pictures, but recent pictures taken by a photographer of the area that was used to load the Jews onto the trains during WWII. The photos were then placed on the ground for three weeks, so they could be affected by the ground and then the photos were photographed and the final products were displayed in the park. It wasn’t what we had expected but it was informative and sad anyway.

Saturday was also the day of the Wasen, pronounced Vasen, in Stuttgart and many of Yvonne’s friends came to Stuttgart for the Wasen. It is a kind of carnival with rides and food booths and games. There are also large tents that have food, 1 Liter beers and live music. We got to a tent by 2pm because in previous years the tents were full by 3pm and people were not allowed inside. This was also the case this year and we had to search hard to find an available table to accommodate our group. At first people were wandering around drinking beers and talking and then band after band took the stage playing German drinking songs, that don’t have too complicated of lyrics and after the first or second time, I now know many of them. Half of the songs were English songs, but many were songs that are not that popular in America and the ones that were popular seemed out of place like “My heart will go on” by Celine Dion. Many of the German songs have hand motions, like swimming or flying. Once the bands started playing everyone got up from sitting on the benches and stood on the benches drinking and singing the night away.

Even in the men’s urinal the guys were swaying and singing the songs that could be heard from the band. I saw a guy walking and while walking turned his head to the left like a swimmer coming up for air and puked in stride and then kept on walking, like it was nothing more than a cough.

It was a ridiculous amount of fun, I cannot wait for more in Munich this week at the "real" Oktoberfest.

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09_26_09 Stuttgart Wasen small