It’s been over a month since the greatest little party on earth, aka Lanternfest, and I figured it’s about time I get these photos online. Also, we’re going to be attending another one of the biggest great parties on earth, Oktoberfest, this weekend so I figured it would be nice to remember our party a bit more before attending that one. Not that their parade has anything on ours!

The Sunday of Lanternfest, after all our guests were on their way back home and we’d taken a little nap on the couch, we made our way down to the fairgrounds to see what was going on. With Mackenzie strapped in and ready to roll, we set off.

Even though our festival may not be the biggest on earth, people who live and celebrate with us really don’t seem to notice it’s not a huge event. They all party like champions! When we got to the fairgrounds, the bands which march in Saturday and Sunday’s parades were giving a concert. Each band played a few songs, warming up for the evening’s upcoming parade and showing off their skills. Some of these people really are talented and we started to wonder just how many of their coworkers have no clue that they play in a marching band on the weekends. 🙂

Hansa Volksmusikverein on stage

Once they were finished playing, all the bands lined up together and marched over to the parade’s starting point. Unfortunately there was still a while to go until the parade would reach our usual street corner and we didn’t want to keep Mackenzie up so late two nights in a row so we took her home, hoping she would fall asleep before the parade started. Because our corner is so close to the house, our baby monitor actually reaches over there so we had plans to watch the parade again while she slept. But anyone with a baby knows plans often don’t go as you’d like. Instead Mack must have sensed the parade was coming and she was fighting off the sleep instead. So Stefan grabbed my camera and went to shoot photos since I hadn’t charged my camera the night before. This really was unfortunate because I think the Saturday parade is often better because there are a lot more participants (festival queens from other areas and things like that) but Stefan thought the Sunday parade was better this time around because the marching bands seemed a whole lot more relaxed.

At any rate, here’s a few highlights which probably would have looked exactly the same regardless of the day you were there.

One of the first floats is always the local wind orchestra. I don’t think I’ve mentioned these guys before but they are awesome. And one of the best parts of the festival is Sunday morning when these guys march door to door to wake up their sponsors. Anyone who has donated money to their club gets this serenade at about 9am — and the sponsor is also expected to start their day off right by offering the group some sort of potent shots. Yikes! As previously mentioned, these people know how to party!

Some of the floats, like that of the orchestra, are the same every year but most of the floats are put together in just a few months time by people in the local clubs and schools. A new theme is set every year by the Lanterfest committee and the people have to figure out how they can create something that fits into that category. This year’s theme was “nimmt 2” — or take two, which basically came out to be things that come in pairs. There were pairs like Snoopy & Woodstock and Kermit & Miss Piggy. And if this had been held in America we probably would have seen Sonny & Cher, too. Not that they are unknown here – I’m just guessing no one had a suitable costume for that. But since this was Germany we had people like Pummuckel & his carpenter guy (forgive me for not knowing his name or looking it up– this post has taken me almost 2 months to write so that will have to do). The Pummuckel wasn’t a bad copy, but I though the carpenter was an especially good match! 🙂

There were also pairs like Asterix and Oberlix. In fact, there were many representations of Asterix and Oberlix running around this cart, most of them looking a whole lot like the characters.

This particular band is one of the mostly highly sought after by our party attendees because they are usually really fantastic and play some great songs. They also do really cool formations while they play which most of the other bands don’t do. But these guys should consider themselves warned: one of their hats may go missing next year because there are some very big fans of them around here. As well as the guys with the big black hats like the British guards!

Now this next photo is a bit scary so I apologize and hope you don’t freak out while drinking anything. This guy was part of the Robinson & Friday group. They seriously scared me–but as you can tell, most of these people in the parade are very used to having their photos taken and have absolutely no problem posing for you. 🙂

Each of the floats is pulled by tractors or little Unimogs (baby mogs as I like to refer to them). The tractors and drivers are mostly from the community and you see the same ones every year. And something else I find great about this event is that everyone who registers to build a float gets a grant from the community of 200 euros for supplies as well as a loaned generator so they have power for lights and music. We are seriously considering doing our own float one year. The son of some friends of ours is in a group of teens that aren’t part of a club but they just decided one year they wanted to make their own float. They’ve been doing it for at least 3 years now and seem to have a blast. But then we’d have to plan our feasting differently so I guess maybe we’ll just wait until Mackenzie gets old enough to march along too.

Perhaps she’ll even want to join one of the cheerleading or dance troups that are around here — we seem to have plenty of them. The cheerleaders were actually quite good, doing all sorts of bucket tosses and things right there on the street…but Stefan asked an important question: If they are cheerleaders, who do they cheer for? We have no idea but I guess maybe they just cheer themselves on. Seriously, though, how cute are they?

If you’ve made it all this way, I hope you’ve enjoyed it. These were only a few highlights of the parade. You missed the guy driving his tractor with his foot (while he’s standing up on the seat)– and the free apple wine being handed out by one of the local apple wineries. The even may be over for now, but it will be back again next year, bigger and better than ever. Maybe we’ll even see you there!