Sunday 10 June 2012

Hessentag Festival in Wetzlar

I spent most of the day relaxing and eating the most delicious meals! Also went shopping at the supermarket and was shocked to see how cheap most everything but beef was! I expected everything to be so much more expensive – but it could just be the strong Aussie Dollar. Lucky for me!
Also spent time with Antje divining food for me. That was very interesting. Basically, I can’t have anything sweet, and barely any fruit except mangoes, peaches and strawberries! Meat, vegies and grains (except rye!) are all good for me too. This is very much what I’ve been eating all my life, since I’ve usually steered clear of sweets and fruit. The rye was a blow though.
Daniel picked me up at 5pm so we could pick up Silke from her work at the University and then head off to Wetzlar. This town has a gorgeous old section and was hosting this year’s Hessentag festival. It’s a huge event with bands entertaining on every second corner, and market booths and food stalls, as well as the sideshow alley with rides .
The old town houses were beautiful – all crooked and odd shapes in part:
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The old church in the town centre is multi-coloured, showing the different times it was added to. It’s partially ruined from what I can tell with the tents and stages obscuring things:
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We had a bite to eat from various stalls. Gyros from one, crepes (not for me, unfortunately) from another and I had a bowl of pea soup with Wiener sausage. Yum! Daniel and Silke had a huge plum-filled dumpling with vanilla sauce and poppy seed. I had a tiny taste but didn’t like it (fortunately!). We had a delicious non-alcoholic beer (Licher) to go with the soup. It was really great and I felt a little bit tipsy afterwards, which was weird!
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Next stop was across the river and then down and back across to side-show alley where we went for a spin on the ferris wheel. From there we could see (and hear!) the huge crowds gathered in front of big tv screenings of the Soccer World Championship game between Germany and Portugal. Some people had come wearing the German colours – in their clothes or painted on their faces. I’d been wondering why!
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There was a couple of great murals under a bridge:
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Daniel and Silke also went on the ‘Star Flyer’ at the other end of the alley, which is basically sitting on swings and spinning round like a carousel but 50 meters or so up in the sky! I took photos from the ground – I was cold enough! They enjoyed it a lot though:
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It was getting quite dark so I took plenty of night shots again. I just love my camera!! It can take such great photos in low light!
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As we were leaving and walking back to the car, the soccer game had just come to an end, with Germany winning. The carry-on was amazing! People laughing and cheering and cars tooting their horns…