This morning was an early on as we have to catch our train to Erlangen. Even with the best intentions this sadly wasn’t the outcome… When we bought our reservation for the bus, the lady told us that the bus left from the main train station thankfully the hostel we were staying at was literally a roll out of bed to the the station. However when got our gear together and went to the station to catch our bus turns out that it was actually leaving from the main train station! With less than 20 minutes until the bus left there was no way that we would be able to make it in time. When we finally walked over to the main station we did indeed miss our bus and had to wait a few hours before we could take a train that would get us there.
After a little longer than we expected, we did make it to Erlangen! We were greeted by Fabian bearing his lederhosen for a traditional German welcoming ;) Just kidding…..Erlangen is actually home to Bergkirchweih. It is apparently the biggest festival apart from Octoberfest, and draws in over one million people over the festival week. After a quick bite of sausage and pretzel since apparently you want to ingest fats rather than carbs before a night of drinking. Both Andrea and I got reeducate in this manner. Off to the festival! Mostly everyone dressed in their Lederhosen and Dirndl. Fun fact about the Dirndl: which side the women tie their bow signifies if they any widowed, single or taken. During the day the everyone was sitting with one another and enjoys thief company in the sunshine. Now since the festival runs firm 11am to 11 pm you can imagine that there were already some rather intoxicated people when we got there! A fight actually broke out right in front of us, but thankfully security got there before anything major happened. We both grabbed a litre of Radler a concoction of beer and lemonade: my new favourite way to drink beer :) Afterwards we are explored the rest of the festival grounds. There were many arcade games, restaurants and food booths. Andrea and I went onto the Ferris wheel and saw a birds eye view of Erlangen. We did our research about the festival before coming and learned that people buy their ‘sweethearts’ a gingerbread heart with an inscription and the person that receives it must wear it the whole night. Naturally we had to get Fabian one :) after searching the many different carts we found a heart that said ‘sorry’! We couldn’t ask for a better way to be Canadian andddd apologize to Fabian for having us stay with him for a few days! Turns out that it was just an insider joke since many Germans didn’t understand it..Sorry!
As the night progressed so did the amount of alcohol ingested. When Andrea and I came back to rejoin the rest of the group they were not sitting anymore. No, they were standing of the tables and singing! Thankfully the band playing sung songs in both German and English so Andrea and I could partake. We also learned a few songs in German, in particular a drinking song! Once the festival closed for the evening we were sure to get a good nights rest from a long day.