Schowo madness

We just got out of this yearly festival thingy which goes on in our fair town. I mentioned something about it in one of my posts from last year, basically for 5 days the city “celebrates” something, although I have no idea what. During this time they have all kind of “entertaining” events in the city center. Yes, that is exactly where we live. There are all kinds of stands with food and drinks and also 2 stages where bands come and play.

This is considered an attraction in this area so people come, and they come by the truckload. For 5 days, from friday until tuesday, these events last from morning until midnight. Some might even think this is a great thing and a great place to have fun.

Well, NOT if you happen live here, I can tell you that! One of the stages is right in front of our house so unless you happen to live in a bunker 100m underground, then there is no way in hell you can have a moment of quiet and peace, even with the windows closed. Which we could not really do because there were above 30C outside. This was really horrible.

Last year we planned to take vacation days during this period and just get out of the city. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned and we had to stay home and endure for 5 days this madness. And they play this horrible fanfare music shit they seem to like to much here in Germany, beer tent music we call it. I imagine if you are completely drunk, in a mass of equally drunk people, then this music might appear appealing to your beer-soaked brain. Not our case.

And when they are not playing the beer tent music, they play those old stupid pop songs or “schlagers” how they call them here. I really don’t get this, maybe they were popular 30 years ago but now ? How come they can’t bring some normal bands which could appeal to people younger than 60 ?

Then not only do we have to cope with this auditory cacophony but they play it so damn loud. The volume is so loud you can hear that shitty music booming through the house even with your hands over your ears, you can feel the house vibrate, hell you can feel your insides vibrate. There were a lot of complains about that last year and they promised they will try to keep the noise down a bit this year. Bullshit, nothing happened.

All this until midnight. And once they stop, it’s not over yet. It takes another hour until the banging stops, until the drunks stop yelling at one another, until they stop pissing in trash cans or in flower pots.

Here are the people who organized this “wonderful” event:

What is the most obvious part of the picture ? Yes, the beer. What a shock. Thank you for 5 days of my life that you wasted!

Black Forest

In this weekend we finally managed to get away and spent two days in the Black Forest, in a small town on the east side of the forest. We left on Friday and we came back Saturday evening. We didn’t really go hiking, mountain biking or something like that, the plan was just to get away and relax for a while. Accommodation at the hotel included dinner which was actually cooked by the hotel owner, who was also a cook. I would say the food was very good, the guy’s cooking skills were not bad at all.

I guess we were not exactly his typical customers though, since we didn’t order any alcoholic beverages and we couldn’t quite finish everything. Not because it was not good but because it was just too much. I guess people over there eat a lot. The room was nice, big and clean. It did lack a coffee machine, which according to Freya should be present one every couple of meters, all over the hotel. The hotel owner was not aware  of her requirements so he was totally unprepared from this point of view. So we had to make do with what we had from home until the next day. And of course, you could not smoke in the room, few hotels have smoking rooms these days. You could smoke on the 2nd and 3rd floors in some special designated areas so it wasn’t all that bad.

The weather was not that great, it rained almost the whole time but that’s something you see quite often in there. We did manage to visit a couple of things though. On friday after dinner we went to the Titisee lake:

The place looks nice and I hope I can come back and see it when the weather is a bit less rainy. And a bit less cold ;-)

The next day we managed to wake in time to go to breakfast before 10am. Which was not so bad. The scrambled eggs could’ve been better but I am used to that, no hotel or restaurant I’ve been to so far makes them the way we like them, I make much better eggs. Otherwise it was all good, especially the dark cherries marmelade. I’ve been trying to find the perfect one by trying all kind of brands from supermarkets and the like but never came close. We asked where do they get it from and apparently it’s made by a local company but only for restaurants and hotels. Such a shame.

After we had enough coffee to make up the previous night we checked out and drove to the lake of Schluchsee but some kind of cycling event was in preparation and they were closing roads down so we left.

Switzerland was next on the list. Not far from the German border is the city of Schaffhausen where on the Rhein river is one of the most powerful waterfalls in Europe and we went to have a look:

The waterfall is impressive and looks kinda violent too.

After that we just went headed back home. I have to say the swiss are complete pussies when it comes to roads. Outside cities you have a limit of 80km/h (as opposed to the typical 100km/h in Germany) and on the autobahns you have 120km/h (as opposed to the typical 130km/h recommended speed, which means no-limit in Germany). However, they have very very expensive fines for going above the limit so I just drove like a wuss for a while until we passed the border. We also came close to ruin the day when I realized that my romanian ID was most likely not meaning much there (didn’t have the passport with me). But the dude at the border must’ve thought we look respectable enough and nodded us through. I guess they don’t really stop cars with german license plates though.

After that we just stopped for a bit at a shopping mall around Stuttgart, where I finally found some jeans that I like. Well, Freya did, actually. Then we just went food shopping and then home.

Where the mess was waiting for us since these days there is this yearly event called SchoWo in our town. For one week there are all kind of activities in the city center, bands singing on two stages, countless stands with food, drinks, etc. There is an insane amount of people in the city, roads are blocked and I can’t get close to the house anymore. And right below our window there is one of the stages, with loud music until midnight each day.

The whole thing will last until tuesday night, what a mess. In the afternoon the music is a bit better but in the morning (and they start early) the play some kind of fanfare music which we hate. Needless to say, we are less than amused about this whole event.

Dacia Bridges

No, it’s not that Dacia, nor this one, but the band “Dacia Bridges“. They have a concert saturday evening at a jazz club in Stuttgart and we got a reservation there. I hope it’s going to be interesting ;-)