Lichtenfels - July 10-14

That's the town I grew up in, in Franconia, Bavaria. I spent the long weekend there with friends that I know from kindergarten days, which is an awfully long time ago by now. I look at my nephew, Jamie, who's now ready to leave kindergarten at the ripe old age of 6 and marvel at how small we were when we met 47 years ago.

But anyhow, I go there to see them, drink beer and eat Franconian food. Most notably Bratwürste. The kind you can't get anyplace else in the world.
In addition it was the first weekend for Schützenfest, the festival for sharpshooters, more specifically the "Royally Privileged Society of Sharpshooters", whose genesis dates to 1413. Thus this was the 601st Schützenfest.

This is actually astonishing, because it means that there has been one every year, including all the war years, and presumably there were quite a few of those in the last 6 centuries. As you might imagine, this is an important event in Lichtenfels, and there really isn't a person who doesn't go and quite a few who go every day. It's a festival, it has food, it has rides, it has beer gardens and halls, it has parades, it has a king of the sharpshooters. You go as a kid and you walk in the parade. You go as a teenager and hang around the rides, using the effect of centripetal force to have the girl get squished into you ;-) , you go as an adult to sit and drink beer - in liters, natch.

So Friday, after my high speed sojourn through upper Franconia and visits to Bamberg and Coburg, we went to the opening, which happens on the market place. There's a truck handing out some free beer, the requisite oompah band and the Schützen assemble to march out to the festival grounds to officially open proceedings.

The weather played along until we made it out there, but after that it started raining, chasing us from he beer garden to the beer hall. Ah well. Nonetheless, the Schwein's haxe (pig knuckle) was most excellent and the beer was mighty tasty.

Saturday was a gorgeous day and we wound up going to Coburg to see the Samba festival. This has evolved over time to be the biggest Samba festival outside Brazil with 200,000 visitors and 3000 performers. It was quite something and in fact way larger than I expected. The entire extended old town is dedicated to it, with at least five stages and performances on many street corners in addition.

Sunday dawned very damp, which did not bode well for the first big parade. The showers were off and on, but it did pour for precisely the hour that the parade went through town. Everyone came to see anyway, but some of the parade walkers were ill prepared and did not look happy.

In the evening, it was the World Cup final. We went early for some rides and beer and then assembled to watch the match in the beer hall. There was much rejoicing. Monday am, I hopped on the train back to Grafenau. Tschüß, Lichtenfels, until Christmas.