Freising Volksfest 2013

Well we are really starting to fall into a routine, although the routine is going to change very soon. We are less than two weeks away from the move to our long term house. Cindy and I sat down last night and went room by room to select what rental furniture we think we need. It was fun in a way because we picked out some contemporary stuff that we historically would never purchase ourselves. It is fun to know we can have a certain style in the home for a relatively short period of time, then give it back when we leave. We are ready to get there and get settled finally. One of the main problems right now is our sea shipment. It has arrived in Germany and is ready to be delivered, we just can't receive it until we get into the house. There are too many large items that we would not be able to move again without significant hassle and expense. We really need some of the smaller items though. It has rained here everyday for the past week or more. The temperature has been in the 40's in the mornings going to school. All of the kid's coats are in the sea shipment. We are making it right now with layers. The temperature is supposed to warm back up for a while, maybe we can make it with out too much more cold weather. We have occasionally thought of other items in our sea shipment that we wish we had already too. Overall we did pretty good planning with what goes air and what goes sea. There are only a couple of items that we were kicking ourselves wondering what we were thinking.

Last week there was a beer festival near our existing apartment in Freising. In fact it is so close we can walk there is less than ten minutes. The only time this was a problem was opening night and closing fireworks. I swear the launch site was the apartment next door. It was loud. Cindy got the opportunity to go one evening with several TI people. This is sort of a warm up for Oktoberfest in Munich. She went in the evening and experienced the atmosphere of a very large tent filled with people drinking beer in traditional German clothing. She will have to add more detail, but did tell me that everybody was standing on the benches jumping and dancing to the music. I think she had a good time.

These are some of the guys that she works with at TI. We wished we had a better shot of the tent to show just how huge it was. This pic gives you some idea.

More about the rides below. Take a look at the one in the background, really high. This was nuts. David wanted nothing to do with it. Your feet dangled out of the pod, as it spun around the pod also rotated. 

Last Saturday we stayed in town and had a restful morning. That afternoon the family set out for the Festival. It was very much like a small fair with a good number of rides and food booths. We sampled a lot of the food and rode a few rides. There really are a lot of similarities to a Texas fair. They had cotton candy, popcorn, and those fresh chips where they cut the potato with the drill bit to make a continuous string of thin cut chips. They also had brats and traditional German items. Cindy found a pretzel stand that has a cheese spread that we found to be very yummy.

Last month I talked about a place in Nice where there was very few employees needed to run a large park with many rides. It was also clear that the safety procedures and limitations we have in the US are not the same. The first ride David wanted to do is the first part of this video above. It looked pretty harmless. We got our tickets and got on. It lasted FOREVER. I suppose they want you to get your money's worth, but this was crazy. This thing got going really fast spinning us on a couple of different axises. Just when I thought it was over they had only slowed it down to reverse the direction. By the time I got off my back was hurt and I actually had sore muscles over the next couple of days. David was pretty done after it too. This from the kid that rode 53 roller coasters at Six Flags in one day a couple of months ago. Later, right before we left, David wanted to do the bumper cars. As you can see from the video it did not go too well for him. He was really done after that.

You paid cash for each individual ride. As Cindy said, they do not try to hide from you how much you are spending by taking tickets like we do in the US. The first ride was the most expensive at 3.50 euro per person. There were really no lines. Anything that the kids wanted to ride we just walked up, bought our ticket and got on.  

We were not there too long. It was on and off rain and we had pretty much seen it all. We got a pretzel with cheese to take home.

Not much else to share for now. Coming up next week is some news related to a pretty major purchase decision.