The Cannstatter Volksfest

Monday, September 28, 2015
Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Today was Volksfest day, but not until 5pm, so us guys decided on going to the Porsche Museum while the ladies shopped the day away in the stadtmitte (city center). There was one problem though in that Monday was the only day that the Porsche Museum was closed…go figure. So Connie, Lori and Tracy took the U-bahn into town while Steve, Bubba and I went to turn in Bubba's car back to the rental agency. Surprisingly, this turned out to be as much of a nightmare as the rental return in Firenze. There were no signs anywhere as the Bahnhof area was undergoing a major reconstruction. After a half hour of driving around we finally found the place and got the car returned. From there we started wandering about, taking in a huge motorcycle accessory store called Louis and then heading towards the shopping district where the ladies were. Even though the district is quite large, it didn’t take long to find Tracy sitting in an outdoor café, all by herself, enjoying a coffee and some cake. Connie and Lori were at a store nearby looking for something. We left the ladies to their shopping and headed for Hanno’s favorite watering hole…Carls Brauhaus. We sat outside enjoying the mid-teens sunny day and a couple of beers and were joined shortly after by the shopping queens.

It was starting to get close to 4pm, so Steve, Lori, Bubba and Tracy made their way back to the hotel with the U-bahn and Connie and I took the S-bahn to Isa and Hanno’s . Connie quickly changed into her dirndl and I into my lederhosen and we met the rest of the gang at the Bahnhof station. From there it was a quick ride to the Wasen on the U-bahn. Having been posted to Germany for a number of years in the mid-80’s, I had been to the Cannstatter Volksfest a few times before and knew what to expect, but for the rest of the group it was a fairly new experience.

The Cannstatter Volksfest is known to most tourists as the Stuttgart Beer fest that has taken place every autumn since 1818 and lasts three weeks from Sep 25 to Oct 11. It takes place at the Cannstatter Wasen, which is a 35 hectare festival area in the part of Stuttgart known as Bad-Cannstatt. There are ten beer tents in all ranging in size of occupancy as large as 5800 people down to 1800, which are surrounded by fairgrounds with all sorts of games and rides. These tents, while massive in size, are temporary and are set up a week prior to the event and torn down right days after .

We met up with Isa and Hanno at the second largest beer tent with a capacity of 5600 called Schwaben Welt where they had pre-booked a table for us all. As we were a half hour late, they were already into their first Maß (litre mug) of beer and the tent was almost full. Shortly thereafter we were joined by Miriam and her boyfriend Christianson. Many beers were drunk and much amazing food consumed and everyone had a blast. There were live bands playing everything from rock to country to German party songs as well as a DJ that Bubba recognized had been at a big party in Toronto a few years back. Part way through the evening, Hanno dragged the guys off to another tent called the Sonja Werz SchatziBar that had a rotating bar on an upper level. We ordered a round of beers and Bubba couldn’t help but notice the Don Julio tequila sitting on the bar so he ordered a round of that for all of us. Unfortunately he heard the bartender wrong and was short some cash, so Christianson covered off the rest. Bubba couldn’t let that go however, so he disappeared to find a bank machine and he showed back up a half hour later with money. We had lost Hanno who had wandered off somewhere so we made our way back to our beer tent where we found the ladies surrounded by drunken Norwegians looking to get lucky. We guys did the only thing we could do at that point, we sat and watched the ladies try to get rid of them.

At about 11pm, the lights started coming on and we were shoo’ed out of the tent. Surprisingly it didn’t take long for them to clear the entire tent out and begin emptying the fairground. We were pretty much done for the night so we all jumped into taxis to take us back to our beds. Of course, we couldn’t go down without a night cap, but we were still in bed by just after midnight.
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