First Stop: Canstatter Volkfest and Hamburg.

My brother arrived in Stuttgart last week and is going to stay with us for a month. The day that he arrived here, we decided to go to the Canstatter Volkfest (also known as Canstatter Wasen) to get a little taste of the German tradition known as "Oktoberfest." Although the party wasn't in Munich like the Oktoberfest that you're probably thinking of, the party in Stuttgart is just like it, albeit a little smaller. It is still the second biggest Oktoberfest-type celebration in Germany though.

Event though we don't drink we still had a great time. There were tons of fabulous rides and food booths.

The lights were bright.

What's more German than a wurst?

At this haunted house, there was a man on the balcony dropping a fake spider on people as they walked by. Some people were really surprised and scared by it. We stood and watched for a little while. Hilarious!

One of the "tents" (which were really buildings) were people were singing and drinking. They were huge and there was so many people.

The view from the ferris wheel.

For some reason, I took more videos than pictures. I mashed all the videos together in one. I hope you enjoy!

We had such a great time at the Volksfest. It's so fun to see Germans and how they celebrate things. The rides were amazing, too. They were almost on par with amusement park rides in the US, and the Volksfest only lasted about two weeks!

The next day, we got ready to head on our trip up to Northern Germany and Denmark. Our train was leaving later, so we shopped around for some essentials and waited for Mark to get off work. At around 7 or so, we boarded a regional train up to Würzberg where we were supposed to transfer to another train.

So as we got on the train and were waiting for it to leave, we noticed one guy dressed in business clothes sitting across the aisle from us talking on the phone. Three other guys came in and sat right by him (because on the regional trains, there are four seats facing each other). We noticed there were a lot of drunk people on the train that had boarded from the Volksfest and most were dressed in lederhosen. I looked across the aisle and I noticed the guy sitting across from the businessman was slumped over in his seat. I just thought, "Good grief! That guy must be tired." I had never seen anyone "sleep" like that on a train before.

Soon after that, I heard the guys sitting around him say, "OHHH!!" Then I looked over, and the guy that was slumped in his chair had BARFED ALL OVER THE PLACE. He even barfed on the businessman across from him. We were sitting there trying to decide whether or not to move, then he barfed again! It splashed across the aisle and almost onto Mark's shoes. We grabbed our bags and bailed out of the chairs to some other seats at the end of the car. Pretty soon it started to smell so bad and we were almost getting sick ourselves. We were covering our noses with our shirts to be able to breathe. We looked around the car, and everyone was just sitting there like it was an everyday occurrence. No looks of disgust or anything! Finally, we couldn't take it anymore so we got up and moved to another car. There were more drunk people in there too, and I was just praying the whole time that no one else would barf! It was pretty nasty at the time, but looking back it's pretty funny. It's not everyday that you get to ride a train with a bunch of drunk Germans in lederhosen!

Finally, we transferred to an ICE (fast train) to Hamburg. We got there pretty late and had a taxi take us to our hotel in another part of the city. The next morning, we got up and explored Hamburg. What a lovely city! Definitely a new favorite of mine. Mark loves it of course (he served his mission in the surrounding areas) and my brother loved it, too.

The two guys with the Hamburg Rathaus.

The Rathaus and the square in front. We got some sandwiches at Kamps (a chain bakery) and enjoyed them in the square. Mark and I had some that were made with käsebrötchen (cheese rolls) and they were delicious!

Mark and me by the harbor.

The harbor.

Enjoying the warm October sun.

One of the canals by the harbor. Lovely, isn't it?

This is the steeple of the church of St. Nikolai. The rest of the church was destroyed in WWII and was never rebuilt. Instead, there's a memorial. Some sections seemed rebuilt with bricks to show what parts of it might have looked like.

Some pieces of what remains.

As we were sitting there relaxing by the memorial, we noticed a man dressed as a hummel leading a tour of people around. A man named Hans Hummel used to carry water from the wells to the people of Hamburg. I'm not sure why people still dress up like he supposedly did, but they do!

We continued walking around Hamburg and enjoying the sights. We shopped for a bit, but didn't really buy anything. We went back to our hotel for a bit because later that night we were going to a concert so we rested up for about an hour. Then we headed back into the city to see Trentemøller, a musician from Denmark. He makes music by himself, but when he performs he gets band members to join him.

It was in a small private club in Hamburg, which was awesome because we got to be on the front row. A band called Chimes & Bells (also from Denmark) opened for them. I hadn't heard of them before, but they were amazing!

Chimes & Bells performing.

I didn't attempt to take any video of them just to spare some room on my camera, but luckily someone uploaded a video of them from our concert. We were off to the right in the very front and we had a good view of the drummer. He was so good! I think that drummers should always be put in the front at concerts. They are so amusing to watch. The singer was excellent, too. Overall, an excellent band!

Then Trentemøller took the stage. Wow! It was such an amazing concert. Even my brother, who hadn't heard of Trentemøller before he came over, said he loved the concert.

Trentemøller performing. I tried to take a video, but the owner of the club came by and told me to put my camera away (at least that's what I assume--he said it in German and I couldn't hear him very well.) I was so bummed because I wanted to get a good video. Oh well. He also told another person near me to put his camera away too, but after he left the guy whipped out his camera again and filmed some more. I didn't film any after he left for fear of my camera being taken away from me or something. But luckily for us, someone uploaded some videos on YouTube! So here's some clips from our concert. The first one is a little shaky, but it's still good. The guy who filmed this was on the front row like we were, so this is pretty much the view we had.

The last video is perhaps Trentemøller's most famous song. It ruled, but so did the whole concert! We had such a great time. Our ears were ringing and they're probably still recovering, but it was worth it. I think it was probably one of the best concerts I've ever been to.

It was a long day so that made for some good sleep! The next day, we went to Stade. I'll update that in the next post. :)