It's Fest Time!
I'm told that the Germans take any opportunity to celebrate and hold a festival. Over the long weekend I got to take in two local festivals. The first one was the Cannstatter Volksfest, an annual two-week festival. The locals in Stuttgart commonly call it Cannstatter Wasen. It is supposedly the second largest beer festival in Germany behind Oktoberfest in Munich. A wonderful couple that Tom and I met here at the hotel journeyed down to the festival grounds with me on Saturday, as Tom headed back to the States Saturday morning. We traveled on the U-bahn, a terrific railway system here in Stuttgart. People openly drink alcohol on public transportation and the sight and sound of empty beer bottles rolling around the floor of the train car was the ambiance as we neared the fairgrounds. I didn't know what to expect at my first beer festival but it was essentially a giant carnival. There were lots of rides, including two Ferris wheels, roller coas...