Busy day in Bavaria

Could the city of Augsburg possibly fit more things on one day? This weekend was the big Turamichele festival, celebrating a figurine of the angel Michael, stabbing Satan with a pike.

It's part of a clock on the Augsburg town hall or Rathaus and it used to be a mandatory holiday. Now it's more of a festival for kids, with games, kiddy rides, bounce houses, cookie decorating and balloon contests where children send up balloons with messages and see whose goes the farthest. As part of this festival, Augsburg also held Marktsonntag or Market Sunday.

Part of living in a smallish big town like Augsburg is basically everything is closed on Sunday...everything. There are a few restaurants open, but mostly you go to church and walk around town with your family. So when shops open on Sundays it's a pretty big deal. Because of the festival + marketsonntag, downtown was literally packed with tourists and tour buses from all around the area had been pouring in for the last three days. Augsburg gets mostly day-trippers so to have so many people was a bit overwhelming.

I rode my bike the back way (haha...love being a local) to the Stadt Market, parked my bike at the library and wandered around the masses. The Stadt Market, which usually is just a large group of food stalls, had set up improvised beer gardens, each with their own entertainer. I passed by the Austrian accordion lady, past the slightly drunk sounding lounge singer (either that or he didn't know English very well as he slurred his way through "Strangers in the Night") and finally to the cutesy couple singing 70's disco love songs.

Today was also election day in Germany. Walking past the toy store, caught sight of a local celebrity politician. Considered taking his picture, but thought that would be too awkward. He had literally set up a stand in the middle of the sidewalk and was just standing there, chatting with whoever wanted to talk with him. His posters were all around town so it was strange to see him in person. German political posters usually are HUGE head portraits of the politician (which is kind of funny considering they basically vote for the party, not the person). His were not quite as obnoxious as Claudia Roth's

This poster is literally as tall as me...imagine them everywhere...creepy

And you have to admit, the little truck was kind of cool...

Anyway, back to the festival/marktsonntag. I managed to escape the claws of two very strange puppeteers, only later did I realize they were from the local puppet theater. All I knew was a guy with a huge stork puppet and purple pants kept coming my way and I would have to duck into stores to avoid him.

Street musicians were also out in force including another accordion player, a jazz band and white reggae performers with their drums and sad sense of rhythm.

By this time, I was getting antsy so I called Christine. Unfortunately, she was two hours away on a train so I went to get a cheap ice cream cone (should have gotten Movenpich's...so much better), found my bike and managed to bike home without running over tourists.

Overall, it was fun, but just too many people with all the locals shopping and voting and all the tourists wandering around.

Next week, I hope to go to the Augsburg Food and Wine festival so hopefully, it will be less crowded and have more free food!