Munich To Stuttgart
Cannstatter Volksfest
Septemeber 23, 2007

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Since I had such a long stay in Munich at the world’s largest beer festival and had read and then had confirmed the evening before that weekends were a nightmare at Oktoberfest, I decided to go watch the beginning of the world’s second largest beer festival in Stuttgart which started today.  I got up at an un-me like 5:15 AM to catch a 6:30 AM train to Stuttgart.  I was in Stuttgart by 9:00 AM.  The train was very nice, an ICE, but there was no surcharge this time.  The other nice thing that I could have used the day before was the chair I was in had an electrical outlet.  The train made a few stops like in Ulm, which is the real reason there was no surcharge.  The Frankfurt to Munich train I was on was a direct train with no stops.

Once getting to the train station in Stuttgart, I wandered aimlessly for awhile, which I’m really good at.  I couldn’t figure out which subway station to go to for the Le Meridien Hotel where I was staying.  I finally found a tourist information center and she told me not to bother with the subway because the hotel was a 10 minute walk through the Schlossgarten Park right across the street.  She showed me on a map and even better when I made the left to go to the park I saw the Le Meridien sign atop the hotel.  My luck was holding out even when I got to the hotel since they actually had a room ready at 9:30 AM.  The room at Le Meridien was one of the nicest I’ve ever been in.  And just like the 2 prior Marriott Hotels, the beds and pillows were awesome.  They have put a ton of pillows on the beds but all different types.  Big hard ones, small fluffy ones, you name it they have it and you just pick the one you like the most.

The hotel is 200 yards away from the nearest U-Bahn subway stop and the festival was about 6 stops away from the hotel.  The stop is named after the festival, the Cannstatter Wasen stop.  I do have to ask someone because I heard someone say it but didn’t know why but the Munich Oktoberfest is called the Weisen, the Stuttgart Cannstatter Festival is called the Wasen.  I got there before anything really had opened. There is an agricultural side to this festival also, but they wanted 11 Euro to get in to that portion.  I wandered up and down the festival grounds just checking things out and finally asked someone where the opening ceremony was being held.  It was to start at 11:00 AM at the Dinkel Acker Tent.

I headed to the Dinkel Acker Tent, which is a good size but still a little smaller than the Munich tents and was surprised that I found a decent location to watch the ceremonies.  The tents hold maybe 6000 compared to the 10,000 in Munich.  My spot was behind a table of veteran Festival goers.  They were about 60-70 years old and one guy had everything.  The brought a 3 pronged coat rack that he screwed into one of the tent support columns, he had a big container of cigars ready to smoke and he had a bottle of some liquor he brought in.    The beer fraus must have known him pretty well since one kept taking his liter of beer for a few drinks herself.  The ceremonial opening of is just that, ceremonial.  Beer was flowing at all the tables by now.

There was one real annoying thing about the opening ceremony.  They were televising it in town I guess and had a couple of camera stands on each side of the ceremonial stage.  They also had a third camera on a giant boom.  Well the boom operator or the producers giving him direction were idiots.  He kept bring the boom over the middle of the tent about 6 feet off the ground and in between the 2 stationary cameras.  They could have just put another stationary camera there if they need that shot.  This made it a pain in the butt for anyone more than 100 feet from the stage to get a good view of the ceremony since there was this giant boom across the entire stage blocking your view. 

The other ridiculous thing was they had a bunch of break dancers come out and perform at one point.  Well, the stage was not that high off the ground and anyone not in the first couple of rows completely lost view of these guys as soon as they hit the floor to break dance.  The ceremony took over an hour which seemed like a whole lot longer since I didn’t know what they were saying but the mayor finally came out to tap the first keg.  I had heard that opening the keg on three whacks with their hammer is considered pretty good.  This mayor must have known his stuff because he got it opened on the second whack.  The ceremony ended and I started to head out but noticed I could get a seat inside the tent, which I hadn’t been able to do yet in Munich, so I sat down for a Dinkel Acker Beer which was brought to me by beer frau Sylke.  I do enjoy German Beer and Dinkel Acker is particularly good.  It’s going to be hard to go home back to Miller Lite and the other American offerings.  I’m to cheap to buy the German stuff back home. 

I left Dinkel Acker after one beer because I wanted to check out as many tents as possible.  There is no way to do that and drink more than one mas at each tent.  I went down to the first tent to make my way up the festival grounds.  The Cannstatter Festival grounds are about half the size of Munich’s grounds.  The first tent on the grounds to visit was the Schwaben Brau Tent.  Schwaben Brau has been the only tent to have ceramic beer mas’s instead of the glass ones.  The Schwaben Brau Tent also had some groovy tunes including Hello Dolly and When The Saints Come Marching In.  I was also able to get an inside seat at this tent. 

I started noticing a few things about this festival as opposed to Munich’s.  There are not as many people wearing the traditional lederhosen and dirndls.  As I mentioned before I like the dirndl’s very much.  Another trend of the area more than the festival is a bunch of young kids have there hair layered in color.  Mostly jet black on the bottom layer of hair with bleach blonde on the top layer of hair. I didn’t notice this once in Munich but all over the place in Stuttgart.

The next tent was the Furstenberg Tent.  This is where I first noticed the hair thing.  They had a good band playing here also with a couple of girl singers.  There was a young guy at a table next to me that was fighting a losing battle with his Furstenberg Beer.  He would alternate between attempting a drink by just kind of pulling his head up off the table and towards the opening of the mas.  Then he would adjust his location until finally finding his golden nectar.  Then his head would go back to the table. After watching this 5 or 6 times his friends finally took his beer away.  I think this was more of a defense from having him spill his beer all over the table than a worry of him drinking more.

On to tent number 4, the Gockelesmaier Tent.  I again found seating inside the tent and since the Gockelesmaier Tent’s logo was a drinking chicken I decided to have some chicken.  I made the right decision.  Although a small half a chicken it was a very tasty half a chicken.  I realized also in most of the tents that a Coca-Cola is more expensive than a beer.  It was 3.20 Euro for half a liter of beer and 3.50 Euro for .4 liter of Coca- Cola.  I finished my beer and chicken and I was about through.  Waking up at 5:15 AM, having 4 Liters of German Beer had walking all over the festival grounds had wiped me out.

I went to look for some souvenirs and found after making a lap of the festival grounds there were only 2 stands selling souvenirs and most were discounted 2005 souvenirs at that.  They didn’t even have any that actually had 2006 on them.  On top of that there was an entire section of a crappy flea market going on.  I guess it’s nice for the local Stuttgart residence but I didn’t expect to see that.  I bought a pin and beer mug then had a hankering for some food before I left.  I had a barbeque rib sandwich at one stand and some calamari at another.  I was surprised by the rib sandwich when he put the rib on the roll, but somehow he cut the rib to get only meat.  It was a big rib. 

I took the subway back to the hotel and it was about 7:00 PM.  I was wiped out and went to sleep and figured if I woke up in a couple of hours I’d go out.  I woke up at midnight, so I downloaded my pictures and went to sleep again until 8:00 AM.
 

Return To Neuschwanstein September 22, 2006

Continue To Stuttgart To Munich September 24, 2006