I’m back in Cologne after a great two weeks in Wisconsin. It was very busy with a wedding, baby shower, filming for house hunters 🙂 and visiting with friends and family. Once I got back to Cologne, we immediately headed to the wine festival to sample some delicious German wine. Then we headed south to Bavaria for a lesser known beer festival.
Back in 2010 when Alex was studying in Frankfurt, his German teacher from Whitewater, Herr Lange came to visit us (I was also in Germany at the time). He took us to the Erlangen beer festival aka the Bergkirchweih. It’s the second largest beer festival after Oktoberfest and it’s about 55 years older than Oktoberfest but not as well known. We probably would never have heard about it if it wasn’t for Herr Lange.
Fast forward six years and we find ourselves back at the beer festival. We arrived in Erlangen around 9pm (in our new car!) and headed over to the festival to check out the night scene. It was really busy but luckily, nothing compared to the craziness of Oktoberfest. We ordered two beers (or a maß) but weren’t able to snag a seat so we found a side table to set our drinks down on (thank God, because those things are heavy!). We sang along to some German drinking songs, drank beer and wished we would have worn our lederhosen and dirndl until it was time to head home for the night.
We walked over to the festival around 11am the next morning. It wasn’t too busy so we were able to find a seat in the more popular tent with ease. We ordered a maß each and hoped for a cool glass (they all have different pictures on the clay mugs) that we could take home as a souvenir. A lot of places in Germany will put a deposit on the glasses called pfand (in this case it was 5€) and when you return the glasses you get your money back, so technically we paid for them 😀. We ended up staying a while talking to some locals, sampling the 1/2 chicken plate and enjoying the beautiful 75 degree weather. We will definitely be back next year!
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You’re going to have quite a beer mug collection! Sounds like your weekends will be chock full of cool festivals. Nice to have a car!
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Nice car!
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Sunny and Alex, thanks for sharing. Alex, your Mom gave us your blog–hope that was Ok Sunny! Missed seeing you when you were home–hopefully next time!!??
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