I went to Dancecentrum, in Stuttgart, to see Kraftwerk

Last Friday, I found out that Mike P (San Diego's Mike P, not to be confused with Stanford's Mike P) was in Stuttgart, Germany for business for a few weeks. Fortunately for all those involved, Stuttgart is celebrating Cannstatter Wasen right now -- sort of a smaller scale Oktoberfest. As it is but a short 5 hour train ride from Lausanne to Stuttgart (Lausanne to Bern, Bern to Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe to Stuttgart), I woke my butt up early Saturday morning and caught the train to Stuttgart, and met Mike at the station around 1 pm on Saturday. After dumping my bag at his hotel, we wisely left the car and took the subway to the party.

The Cannstatter Wasen, or Volksfest, is allegedly more of a fair than a drinking festival (or so claims Wikipedia). Certainly, there are ferris wheels, attractions, carnival food, and games, but the big draw is obviously the drinking tents. If Wikipedia is to be believed, there are seven of these at the fair and each holds around a couple thousand people. As Mike and I didn't really have much of a plan, we just wandered into the first tent we saw and tried to find a seat.

What we didn't realize is that all of the seats are actually reserved ahead of time (something that would lead to trouble later in the night). We walked into the first tent, looked around, saw a couple of empty seats at the end of a table, and went over and asked if we could sit down. Fortunately, the people who had reserved the table were quite friendly and more than willing to squish in a little bit to accommodate the Americans. Once seated, we caught the eye of the first lederhosen-wearing waiter we could find, held up two fingers, and were rewarded with two beers within a couple minutes or two. And by beer, I mean beer. Called a "mass," beer is served in a ridiculously large 1-liter glass mug.

Pretty much every tent had a live band. Although I wouldn't describe the bands as "awesome," they certainly had a lot of energy and played a weird mix of music. In the first tent, we walked in to hear "Hit the Road, Jack;" later heard "Volare," and even heard this awesome number. I want to point out that I registered for a stupid youtube account just so I could post this video, so I hope that those of you who recognize the song enjoy it. If you don't recognize it, don't worry, it's not that funny.

Here's a photo of someone I saw who is obviously a keen observer of American politics. Even though she was disappointed by Huckabee's loss in the primaries, she was still willing to pose for a photo with me.

Fig. 1: The back of the shirt says, "Roundhouse Kick."

Since there was a soccer game that afternoon, a lot of people left around 3 pm to go to the game. Thus, the tent we started in kind of emptied out and a new group of people with reservations came in. We figured it was a good time to hit another tent. After asking around, we were told that the Arcadia tent was the most fun, so that's where we headed. Of course, when we got there, we found that all of the tables were reserved. We asked probably about twenty different groups if we could squeeze onto their table and were turned away by all. Sucked. After a lot of looking around and a couple of misfires, we finally settled in with a group that had a lot of empty seats and were more than happy to have us. They were friendly and talkative, so we made quick friends. By the end of the night, everyone was dancing on the table and singing along to the music. A good time was had by all.

Fig. 2: Mike with some of our new German friends. Most of them were out of high school, we think.

Fig. 3: According to my camera, it was 7:41 when I took this picture. I will have to take its word on that.

The rest of the night progressed without much to report. or at least I didn't remember to take any more photos. I'm sure there were other tents, other beers, maybe some security guards here and there, and at least one incident where I decided to get rid of all the change in my pocket. Pretty much your standard night at the Volksfest. In the end, we managed to get back onto the subway and back to Mike's hotel with minimal damage, although I did wake up with a weird bruise on my shin; but sometimes you just don't ask questions.

The next day, we got in Mike's rental car (a BMW 1-series), got on the Autobahn and aimed for the nearest castle. Fortunately, Burg Hohenzollern is a quick drive from Stuttgart (even quicker if you drive like Mike) so we were able to spend a couple hours there before I had to catch the train back to Lausanne. Burg Hohenzollern is actually a neo-gothic castle that was built on the remains of other castles dating back to the 11th century, so the building itself is somewhat of a fraud. The lower levels have been excavated and are "authentic" and pretty interesting, but everything else is a 19th century product. Still, it is an incredibly impressive place due to it's unique location: it sits on the very top of a nearly perfectly isolated hill with unblocked sightlines of seemingly hundreds of miles in every direction. Definitely worth the trip, just for the view alone.

Fig. 4: The view from Burg Hohenzollern isn't usually this handsome.

Fig. 5: There are TWO SanGiorgio's in this photo. It's like seeing double, right?

All in all, I was quite impressed. It should be noted, however, that Burg Hohenzollern doesn't even make Frommer's list of Top Ten German castles, nor does it make About.com's "Top Ten Must-See Castles in Germany," either. It really says something about the country when it takes more than this to crack the top ten. Or, at least, it says something about the country's castle-building industry.