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Sunday. I went out yesterday too. The Schützenfest (Shooting party) is all the weekend. It’ll finish tomorrow with the coronation. Let me explain a bit. They hang a wooden bird on a thing. The men of the town take turns to shoot at the bird and the one who takes the bird down is the king. That happened on Friday and I was lucky to see the bird going down.
Yesterday, the party was for the king and queen that I assume they were the king and queen from last year. Men and women dress with typical costumes and there is a lot of music and alcohol.

These are some of the pictures I took.

That was the first view of the party from the distance.

You can’t see very well but that’s a big tent full of tables and chairs and a big stage.

The mill with some of the decorations.

So I walked towards the crowd and OMG they were almost all men. Like only 5 women and me. Am I in German Heaven? All men it doesn’t mean they were all gorgeous or even good looking… Or young. They ranged from 20 to 90.
I was really surprised and decided to take a walk around.

That’s like a typical German candy store. They are always there on carnivals and things of the sort. That’s where the kids were.

And I kept walking and saw this just outside the tent… That didn’t give me a good feeling.

Aha!! Here is where ALL the women where… In the tent drinking. I didn’t have to think much to know where I wanted to be…

Outside, of course!!

So I took a place by the fence and started watching the men shooting at something that I couldn’t understand what it was.

When the thing that until that moment I didn’t know what it was, fell down, I stopped the youngest guy cleaning up and asked: “Do you speak English?” “Yes, a bit”. Great… Then I asked a bunch of questions about the event.
He gave me too little information about the event and WAY TOO MUCH information about the gun and the bullets. Those are 38 grams. (I repeat what he said even though I didn’t understand one word of it and only nodded. Maybe you understand a bit, if not, do the same I did and nod).
Apparently they start shooting with 40 grams and they end up with 36 grams. ??? (exactly!). I asked: “And the shooting goes on until the bird falls?” “Yes” “So sometimes you keep shooting the entire night?” “No we know that more or less the birds falls after 200 shots”. Interesting. Thank you.

So I wondered how that worked. Do the men go and register late so they get to shoot after 199 shots? Is there a raffle? Do they shoot only once? Were there more than 200 men? Is anyone single? Too many questions…

That’s the remaining of the dead wooden bird.

That’s how the street looks from the mill to my house (and almost everybody else’s houses). Great, right? You can drink all you want and then you just roll yourself and leave gravity and frictional force do the rest till you get home.

I know, there will be some acceleration included, but fear not, the wall in the end will stop you before you even get scared.

~ by DotedOn on July 5, 2015.