Kürbis Gallore

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It's been almost two weeks since I journeyed to Ludwigsburg Palace for the palace tour and to visit the annual Pumpkin Festival.  It was really nice getting out and seeing something over the long Columbus Day weekend. Apparently this is the world's largest pumpkin exhibit - some 500,000 kürbis, which is the German word for pumpkin.  All different shapes, sizes and colors. 

It seems they have a theme for each festival and this year's was fairy tales.  I didn't recognize some of the stories.  Here are a few.

The Pied Piper is below.  You can't tell very well but even the mice are pumpkins.  Yes, gray pumpkins!



















Here is Gulliver's Travels...the part where he is tied down by the Lilliputians.



Behind me you'll see three characters...this is Hansel and Gretel and the evil woman trying to lure them into her home.


Each exhibit had a storyboard.  Here is the one for Hansel and Gretel.

 I can't remember which fairy tale this was but it was a young prince and a dragon.  My favorite part of the dragon was its tail, which was made with some kind of crooked-neck squash.

Close up look.

These guys weren't depicting a fairy tale but I found them just too darn cute.  It's a slap happy Mayflower. 
 

All the different pumpkins were displayed along the outside walls of the gift shop.  Here is a picture of just one side of the shop.  There were truly some unique looking pumpkins.
 
While at the festival we stopped and had some lunch.  There were several menu choices...all madewith pumpkin!  I elected to try the pumpkin soup with a pumpkin maultaschen, which is kind of like a giant ravioli.  It is a culinary specialty in Germany.  Yum!

I'll leave you with one final photo.  We also did the palace tour but I'll post those pictures later this week.  I think this post is long enough.

Obviously at any food related festival there has to be a "Who can grown the largest (fill in the blank)" contest.  Well, below are the top three contenders for the largest kürbis, the largest being in the middle.  Later in the day we saw them removing these and it took a forklift!  I should have taken a picture standing next to them so you could see the real scale of these big boys.  Imagine carving a jack-o-lantern out of one of these.

 






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