Day Trip: Idstein Spring Festival

For the past two weeks, it's been unusually sunny, warm and beautiful here. This weekend, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. On Saturday, we got caught in the middle of a hail storm, something I have never witnessed outside of Colorado. When I say "hail storm", I don't mean the typical strong thunderstorm with accompanying hail that was more common in the southeast, I mean that it went from being sunny and calm to 30 mph wind gusts with pea sized hail stones (no rain) within 5 minutes. We just so happened to be leaving the store with a car load of groceries when it started. I always assumed the reasoning for the hail storms in Colorado was due to the high altitude and inability for the hail to melt into rain before hitting the ground, but that wouldn't explain why it suddenly hailed here. Welcome to springtime in Germany, I guess. It was obviously the best weekend possible to take a trip to a Spring festival a few towns away.

Idstein is a small town a short train ride from the city where we live. A few months ago, some friends expressed interest in going on a guided tour that left from our train station to go to Idstein and spend the day at their Spring festival. Part of the tour was a beer tasting as well.

The town itself is probably exactly what people imagine in their heads when they picture Germany. It was full of medieval half timbered houses intricately painted and narrow cobblestone roads. There were ruins of the old castle built in the 15th century which

was now a government building. There is also an ancient tower known as "The Witch's Tower" because there was once a huge witch hunt in the city that resulted in several persecutions. The people of Idstein

believed the Tower was somehow cursed and bewitching people into becoming witches. In reality, it's just an old look-out tower that really has no connection to the witch hunt. Each year, they have a big "Witch's Festival" in Idstein that apparently includes everyone dressing up like witches. Even in a lot of the windows of the buildings, they have little witch trinkets and
decorations. You can climb the stairs up the Witch's Tower, but you'll have to retrieve the key from the tourist information center and climb up by yourself after locking yourself in. We didn't attempt to climb up the tower because we've never seemed to have a successful time climbing medieval European staircases.

Typically in Germany, stores are not open on Sundays because they are supposed to be the day for family time and, mostly, to promote people to go to the museums, monuments or parks. Some cities allow stores to open on Sundays for special occasions. The Spring festival was one such occasion. All of the stores and restaurants were still open for the day. Even so, there wasn't much to do in Idstein. After we finished the tour and went to the beer tasting, there were still 4 hours left until our tour headed back home. We all sort of agreed that as gorgeous and interesting as Idstein was, it was more of a place to stop through on a short visit and head home after about 2 or 3 hours.

Greg thought Idstein was the best example of German culture we've seen so far. It was definitely the most German-looking place we've visited. We also met a calligrapher who decorates all of the lamp posts in Idstein and gave us a demonstration on different styles of calligraphy after one of our friends took an interest in learning.

Next weekend, Augustus is having an extended sleepover with two of his friends. Our friends who typically watch him are going out of town, so we'll be keep their pets for them. In April, we'll hopefully we'll be taking a weekend to head to the coast to pick up our Jeep, but we do not know when exactly. Then, in May, we'll be taking a trip to Holland to visit Amsterdam, some fishing villages and finally, the Keukenhof! We may also have a visit from some friends in May, but we aren't completely sure yet.