WineFest Weekend

This weekend, I visited Verena's home village, and spent a lot of time with her, her sister Conny, and her boyfriend Alex. First, we went to her house, which has a lot of plants, and I met her parents, who were very sweet despite not speaking much English. They were very welcoming, and were excited to introduce me to Germany.

Then, we went to Kitzingen, which is the big village in the area around Wurzburg, to see their Stadtfest, or city fest. Interestingly, Dracula's tomb is in this town:



The whole grave was really creepy, with skulls engraved everywhere. On the ceiling were these skeletons fighting angels...


And, on the top of the grave is the triangle with the eye, like on the dollar bill. Alex, Verena's boyfriend, studied history so he knows a lot about the region. He says this symbol is here because the Illuminati originated in this area. It's like Angels and Demons followed me here or something...



This is the big tower in Kitzingen, which was part of the original town wall. Notice that the top is crooked.



Inside the tower is a museum about Carneval, which is a festival to scare away the winter, and people wear these creepy masks.



The second picture with the marching band made me laugh. It's kind of like the YPMB...

This church is the Protestant Church in Kitzingen, but it used to be a nunnery back in older times.



This is a fountain shaped like Jerusalem outside of the Catholic Church in Kitzingen.



This is the synagogue - the gestapo in Kitzingen didn't destroy the whole building during WWII, but burned down the roof. So, unlike a lot of synagogues in Germany, this one still still has a lot of the original structure.



This is one of the older roads in the city - you can see how narrow the street is, and how close all the buildings are to each other. The house in the picture was built in the 1500s.



This is the Stadtfest - it's kind of like a state fair, but with more bratwurst. In this picture, there are a bunch of jugglers. Also, there were little kids riding toy motorcycles around that said 'polizei,' and they were really cute.



After the stadtfest, we went to the Kitzingen museum, which had a lot of artifacts from ancient times as well as medieval times. In the picture below, you can see a crossbow. There's also a sort of trap that people used to set up at the door to their house to deter thieves, so if the door was opened in the night, it would pull the trigger of this gun. I took this picture to show Johnny that I now know how to defend my room from sibling attack.



I also took this picture for Johnny - I know it's really shaky but I had to take it without flash in the museum. See Johnny, they play Code of Honor and all those war video games here, too.



The little statue in this picture tells the story of how Kitzingen got it's name. The girl is holding out a handkerchief, and she would stand on the hill outside of the town and throw it into the wind. One day, a shepherd named Kitz brought the handkerchief back to her, and now the city is named Kitzingen, after him.



After the museum we went out to dinner at a restaurant. About German beer: there are two main types - beer with the yeast taken out of it, like all American beer, and beer with the yeast still in it. Also, it is common here to drink beer in a 1:1 mixture with lemonade. It sounds kind of weird, but I tried it. They insisted that the yeast beer with lemonade is the best, so I ordered one of those. It tasted really sweet.



Then we went back to Verena's house to get ready for the winefest. Alex is a volunteer fire-fighter, and he wanted me to try on a German fire helmet, so I did.



Then we went to the winefest, which is like a state fair, but all about wine. All the little booths sell either wine, pretzels, or bratwurst. They had one of those traditional oom-pah bands playing a mixture of traditional bavarian songs, and american songs. My personal favorite was 'Highway to Hell' played on accordion. We met up with Verena's friends, a bunch of whom were english teachers. Because their English teachers had been sometimes British, American, or Australian, their accents were really interesting. Also, every time some one asked me where I come from I got the same responses. I would say I'm from New Jersey, and I go to school at Yale. Then everyone would say "New Jersey like the Jersey shore? Is it really like that there? And THE YALE? Like in Gilmore Girls?!" It was really funny.

On Sunday, after a huge traditional Bavarian breakfast with weisswurst, Verena and Conny and I went up in the mountains, and sat by the Main River. These swans were chasing a boat that was throwing out bread for them. The hills are covered in vineyards - everywhere here they are growing grapes for wine.



And, last but definitely not least, here is the huge pile of candy Verena and Conny gave me. They got German candies that they thought I would not have tried in America. A lot of it is hazelnut candy. And gummy bears are my favorite candy. I'll keep you updated on how all the candy is.