Tag Archives: Lederhosen

Stuttgart’s Cannstatter Volksfest

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Day 41     Friday, October 10, 2025

On the drive into Stuttgart we pass a huge fairground. It is the Volksfest Canstatter, which is the second largest beer festival in the world!

The Canstatter Volksfest started in 1818. In those early days agriculture was the primary focus.  Vendors around the edge of the fairgrounds sold sausages, sauerkraut, and beer. Carnival attractions featured “strong men” and other typical nineteenth-century curiosities but as the years passes beer and food took center stage.

Today the festival takes place for 17 days between September 25 to October 11. Last year this event had 4.6 million visitors.

Right beside the entrance, which is free, we see these young men in matching lederhosen drinking beer.

This ferris wheel is at one end of the fairground and we decide to go for a ride.

There are 5 kilometres of rides and attractions, children’s rides, stalls, market stands, many food and drink stands, including eight beer tents, countless beer gardens, snack bars, and candy stands. We have a great view of some of this from the top of the ferris wheel.

The white roofs are all the beer gardens!  The eight tents on site hold a total almost 34,000 people! There is also a second ferris wheel at the other end of the fairgrounds.

We have a great view of these swing ride.  At 80 meters it is way too high for me!

After our ride we notice the changing colours on the ferris wheel, done with 1000 LED lights! The centre circle changes too, and we both thought this eye was quite striking.

The fun houses here are huge and very ornate. This photo captures about one half of the length of this one.We liked the flying witch, the dragon, and the ghost in the window.

I thought it was lovely to see live flowering plants on the tables at the beer gardens.

There was lots of screaming coming from this ride!  The rides here also last a long time, much longer than the exhibition rides back home.  If you decide that a ride wasn’t a good idea, you are trapped on it for many revolutions!

Time for some Bratwurst mit Brötchen…but we decide against the half meter long option.

Back to walking around the grounds and the sun has set.  Our ferris wheel ride looks much prettier at night.

Some of the sweet treats available.

The beer tents have facades that look like alpine chalets and they are huge. Each tent seats anywhere between 2,500 and 5,600 thirsty festival-goers!  It takes several weeks to erect the tents and then almost as long to take them down and store them. I really thought these were permanent structures until we walked behind one and saw the SeaCans and canvas walls.  Seems like it is mostly young folks attending the beer gardens, and many are dressed in traditional German dirndl dresses and lederhosen. There was a very long line up all night long to get into this particular beer tent.

This beer tent balcony is packed…

,,,and a screen outside gives us a view of the action indoors. I am quite happy not to be inside with that mob of drinkers!!

We are quite content walking outside and looking at the rides and all the people having fun. At home this ride is called the Drop of Doom…it is pretty colourful! Those are people’s feet hanging below their seats as they ride up to the very top of this tower, and then plummet to the bottom!

There is a rollercoaster ride. It is much bigger than it looks in this photo.This was a crazy ride with seats spinning in one direction and the whole platform spinning up and down in another direction!  There was a lot of smoke and screaming riders!

A lot of the rides have smoke effects.

I always like carousels. This one had a lot of lights… 

…but not as many as this ride!

Another crazy ride.  The seats are just visible through the smoke.  They twist and turn upside down as they twirl around, with lots of smoke…

…and some real shooting flames!

The last time we saw fish on a stick was on our trip when our oldest daughter was four years old. I didn’t see anyone actually eating one of these. Maybe they taste better than they look?

The rides here all have lots of lights and special effects.  You can just make out the seats flying by at the bottom of the ride.

There is a definite Polizei presence. We saw several groups on patrol,  but we only saw one drunk person.  His buddy was half carrying him..his feet and legs just weren’t working at all!

Some of the lederhosen wearing men have these funny half socks that they wear on their calves along with regular socks.

There is even a store on site selling lederhosen and dirndl dresses,  We were both rather shocked at how expensive the lederhosen is.  They started at €250 and went up from there!

The grounds are busy and I’m not sure we saw everything but we were tired and head home.

There is also a little fair just a few minutes from our apartment, so we walk through part of it too. I loved these balloons and stop for a photo. The guy selling them came over to sell me one, but when he saw I was just taking a photo he burst out laughing!  It was a fun night but we are happy to be home.

Frankfurt, Germany

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Day 33     Thursday, October 2, 2025

We take a train into Frankfurt.  Once we had our tickets it was easy but once again we had problems using one of our credit cards.  This trip has been a challenge with credit card, debit card and cell phone issues.  I am beginning to think we are jinxed!  It is so good to be traveling together. I think if either of us were trying to sort out these problems on our own it would be much more difficult. The saga continues as we find the Hertz car rental company in the train station.  This trip we are told we need to extend our car rental contract every 30 days by simply checking in to any Hertz office.  Well, it turns out that a Hertz office in Germany cannot extend  contracts that was signed in another country. Sorting this out takes more than an hour and we are still not sure it actually will be taken care of.  We will see.

We walk down the street across from the train station. I am struck by the contrast between the old and the modern buildings.  I should have paid a bit more attention to the signs on the storefronts.

After a man and his lady friend propositioned me we noticed that we were walking through the red-light district!  We had a bit of a chuckle!

Nearly 70% of Frankfurt was destroyed during the Second World War but many of the buildings look older than they actually are.

There were four of these massive sculptures supporting the bridge across the street in the above photo.

In1405, two houses were joined together to make Frankfurt’s City Hall. It is a striking building.

Saturday is a popular day to get married and there is a steady parade of weddings taking place. The bridal couple and their guests wait outside for their turn to be married. It seems strange to me but is perfectly normal here.

We have our picnic lunch on the banks of the Rhine River and then visit this pedestrian bridge. ‘Love locks’ are covering this bridge.  I suspect that before long authorities will have to remove these locks before their weight begins to damage the bridge because of their weight like the bridge in Paris that was covered with locks.

Saint Bartholomew Cathedral is the only church in Frankfurt that survived the bombing of WWII.  Divine intervention?

As we enter the church we see this group of sculptures depicting Christ being crucified on Calvary Hill.  

The cathedral was built in the Gothic style between 1315 and 1358, but suffered a fire in 1867 and then the bombing of Frankfurt in 1944. The reconstruction after these events changed parts of the church. Today it is a hall church with three naves.  The cathedral’s organ is impressive and has a different layout of pipes.

I saw two priests walking out of the church and hurried to take a photo.  They look like they belong in another age and appear very intense.

The cathedral’s bell tower has survived from the 15th century and we are climbing it. This is the view from about halfway up the 66 meter high tower.

We are above the gargoyles.

I will admit that I needed to stop and rest a few times as we climbed 328 steps to the viewing platform, although there were people much younger than me were who huffing and puffing more than I was!  We had a spectacular view of Frankfurt.

Some views from the tower.

We walk around the platform several times.  I wasn’t going to climb all those steps for one quick tour around the tower!

We begin our descent of those 328 steps.  I am very thankful that they are solid stone and I don’t have to contend with see-through wire steps, specially as this is the only staircase to access the tower. We have to squeeze to the side when people pass us their way up the stairs.  

The view through a glass window in the stairwell.

This is the tower…

and here is the viewing platform above the clock! If you look closely you can see the platform railings.

Next we visit the indoor market. I am so tempted to buy some flowers.

Edelweiss and Gentians, two of my favourite flowers.

Everything is so colourful and looks delicious.

Produce doesn’t look this appealing at home.

The leeks are enormous!  We buy some pastry for a snack and I even find a slice of yummy gluten free apple cake.

Heading back to the train station we do a bit of window shopping.  We don’t buy souvenirs as a rule.  It is just too difficult to carry purchases around during an extended trip.

These characters made us laugh. This store carried some interesting merchandise.

I am always kind of shocked to see semi-automatic weapons and other guns on display in store windows!  

In front of the train station this group of friends are all wearing Lederhosen.  I think it was for some special event as they were taking photos of themselves.

Back to the train station to head home.  Another full day!