Pumpkin Festival 2

Festivals are very popular in Germany and the autumn is the favorite time for most of them. Pumpkinfest is full of lots of pumpkin related themes. Heinrich found a huge pile of all different kinds of pumpkins and got his picture taken with them.

Besides pumpkins there were also a lot of craft displays. There was one table that had a bunch of animals on it. At first they looked little stuffed pillows, all soft and cuddly. But when Heinrich looked closer they were really rocks painted to look like animals. Cats and owls and even a bobcat. Nice friends but no bears.

 

Outside was a cool looking barrette holder. They were hooked onto the long pigtails with the painted face of a girl.

A little further along there was a castle. On the castle was a series of targets and the kids could shoot at the castle targets with a toy crossbow. It would shoot little dart-like arrows and there were prizes for anyone who could hit a couple of the targets.

It was a fun day and Heinrich took advantage of the Pumpkinfest food. For lunch he had a pumpkin brat – a sausage with pumpkin seeds in it. It actually tasted pretty good and Heinrich could really taste the pumpkin seeds. The brat was twice as big as the bun so he broke it in half and doubled the brat on the bun. Delicious!

Pumpkin Festival 1

Heinrich really enjoys getting out and visiting the countryside. On the weekend he went to a Pumpkin festival down by Pirmasens, Germany close to the town of Massweiler. There were lots of pumpkins and some of them were very large.

The farmers used pumpkins to make some fun designs and lawn displays. One of them was a large flower made with pumpkins and squash. If you closely you can see the cornstalk people sitting in the lawn chairs on the path.

There was one pumpkin that was so big it started to sag in on its side. The farmers planted a sunflower on top of it and used some smaller squash as eyes. It looked like a big pumpkin face.

One of the fun things for the day was a big corn maze. They called it a labyrinth. It was really big and a little scary so Heinrich thought he would go to the maze that was a little less intimidating.

Just a little way over, there was a different kind of maze. This one was made out of flowers. It was easier to see where he was going and it smelled very very pretty. The flower maze was a lot of fun.

The last flower that Heinrich saw was a huge artichoke. When an artichoke blooms, it has a pretty purple flower that looks a lot like a thistle head. That's because an artichoke is a member of the thistle family, just not as prickly.

Crossing Signs

Heinrich went for a drive in the French countryside. There are lots of signs on the roads to help people know what to watch for. The signs with red triangles are safety warning signs. Outside one of the little towns there was a sign with two swallows and a label that means sky patrols. In America, this would mean that the roads were patrolled by airplanes.

Through the town there was a whole series a funny warnings signs. One of signs showed a duck falling off a wall that was next to a canal in the city. The sign says watch out for the sea.

Just around the corner was a sign that says beware of nesting chickens.

A lot of cities in Europe still have farms and have animals that live right in the city. The cattle crossing in the town was so important that it got three different triangles. That is one big cattle crossing.

 

Whoever was responsible for the designs had a lot of fun. The last sign Heinrich found was for a street crossing that could often be muddy. To remind people that the road could be muddy the sign says boots are recommended and has a camel wearing mud boots. It was fun exploring the town looking for the funny signs.

 

 

Speicher Ice Cream

The other day Heinrich was walking down the street in the town of Speicher in Germany. Its a cool city and its name means, “food warehouse”.   Along the sidewalk Heinrich saw a huge ice cream cone statue at an outside cafe.

 

After he had his picture taken outside he decided to go in and checkout the cafe shop. It had a very interesting menu. The shop specialized in fancy ice cream dishes. One of its most famous is spaghetti ice cream. They have a tri-color spaghetti bowl with strawberry, chocolate and vanilla ice cream.

On the menu there were ice cream bees, snow men, ducks and other fun designs.

Heinrich finally decided on the vanilla spaghetti dish with fresh wild berries. There were strawberries, raspberries and other wild berries like the ones that Heinrich had found on his walks in the woods. It was delicious.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Heinrich went to a very nice group of museums in Munich. They are called the Pinakoteck museums. There is an old one, a new one and a modern one. That's a funny thing about Germany. The new museum is almost 200 years old. In the old Pinakoteck museum Heinrich found;
 

a Rapheal,

 a Leonardo,


a Botticelli – no wait a minute,

it should have been a Donatello and a Michaelangelo. Then it would have been Heinrich and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Neue Pinakoteck (the new museum).

In the afternoon Heinrich went to the Neue Pinakoteck (the new museum). Germany being Germany the new portion of the museum was actually built in the mid 1800s. It has some nice paintings and sculptures from some very famous artists. Heinrich found a painting by Van Gogh. He really liked the color combinations in the painting.

Some of the paintings were by impressionists. In these paintings up close it just looks like a mess of little color smears.

When you back up all the smears come together to make a pretty nice picture.

Some of the paintings were kind of funny. This one is called "The Art Critics" and shows what the artist thought of art critics that commented on is paintings. Not very flattering for the critics.

The lady in this painting sure had a bad hair day. Not sure who paid for the painting but it may have been someone who didn't like this woman.

This picture showed some little boys jousting (playing like knights). It reminded Heinrich of two boys named Thomas and Phillip.

 

One of the paintings was a farm scene that had beautiful light patterns. It was so nice that Heinrich actually bought a small copy of the painting to keep at his own house.

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Pinakoteck

When Heinrich went to Munich he had the chance to go to the Pinakoteck museums, a series of art collections in several different buildings. The first museum had the oldest art in the collection. Most of the early painters were paid by the Catholic Church or other religious people to paint pictures about scenes from the Bible.

This painting was a nativity scene that shows the birth of Jesus with the shepherds and wise men.

These early paintings were often portable so they could move from church to church so more people could see them. To protect the paintings they often came with two sides that could fold together to help protect the painting when it was traveling. Additional paintings would be painted in these side spaces.

Heinrich found this interesting painting that showed lots of scenes from the life of Christ. Each of the little sections showed a different part of the story. It doesn't run in any specific order but it's like a really large storyboard. It helped people who could not read to understand the stories that they learned about in church.

The museum had some artwork from some very famous artists. There is a picture by Rembrandt that shows Abraham and Isaac.

There was also a self-portrait of Albrecht Durer. He was probably the first famous painter from Germany that anyone knows the name of. The reason they know his name is because he painted several pictures of himself and he was one of the first artists to put his name on his pictures.

For lunch Heinrich had his meal in the park under a row of chestnut trees. Sandwich rolls, Pringles and Pims. Tasty if not terribly fancy.

He also found a nice little fountain in between the museums. There were some ducks that thought Heinrich was going to feed them and when he stopped they started swimming towards him pretty fast. He snapped the picture, realized he had nothing to feed them and so he took off before they caught up with him.