Triftfest

We passed this cute little house on our hike to the festival. We also passed a deliciously tacky white-trash house but Kerry wouldn't let me take a picture of it since there were people sitting outside.

Oh this looks yummy right, WRONG! This is what we had for lunch. It is called wildschweinfrikadelle which means wild boar or hog burger. It had a nice spicy taste to it but I just couldn't get over the mushy texture. Yuck!

This was much better then the hog bun!

Ava refused to eat any of the festival food (smart girl). She did, however, eat plenty of goldfish as evident by the crumbs on her stroller tray.

These two were working girls. They were selling goat milk at a nearby vender booth.

These guys used their whips as musical instruments. They cracked them to the beat of different songs. It actually sounded really cool!

Whip it, whip it good!

This man was the announcer for the entire event. I am sure he had lots of interesting things to say. I just wish I could have understood him!

So these guys throw the logs into the lake then wrangle them toward the waterfall. Once they are in position, they open up the dam and the logs flow downstream.

Today we decided to go to the Triftfest, basically a festival centered around logs floating downstream. The festival was posted in the daily base newspaper on Friday but had no directions. There was, however, a number you could call to get directions. Of course we waited until last minute and didn't attempt to call and get directions until today. Who works on Sundays? No one around here so of course we got no answer. We tried to use googlemaps but had no luck there either. I decided we should just drive towards that area and hopefully there would be signs.

We drove for over an hour (no signs to be found) before we spotted a train station (our one shot at finding possible English speaking assistance). I jumped out of the car and ran to the station only to find that it was deserted. I don't mean just closed for the weekend, I mean totally trashed and useless to me. I did notice a man sitting on a bench near the station and since he also noticed me I decided to give him a try. He was a plump, short man with a messed up eye, possibly a birth defect or injury that was surgically fixed to the best of the doctors ability, for this reason he will be referred to as Googles throughout this story. Googles was extremely happy to help and actually spoke some English. He gave me these exact directions (while standing entirely to far up in my personal bubble): drive down the road about 3km then turn right, go more then 3km and you are there. Excellent, that sounded really helpful but what choice did I have other then thank him for the assistance and give it a shot. Well what would you know, it worked. We found the place and I was so excited (way to go Googles).

We loaded up the stroller with all the necessary items: sunblock, drinks, snacks, sunglasses, hats, and euro and headed on our way. Little did I realize that this festival was at the top of a mountain. After a rather long, sweaty, and painful (it was the middle of the day with highs in the 90s and little shade plus I wore uncomfy sandals) hike uphill, we reached it! We saw guys who were using whips as musical instruments, the log floating ceremony, and of course food! Unfortunately we did have to hike back down the mountain to get to the car. Ava passed out and slept all the way home. Since ticks are quite bad around here and we were in the woods, everyone got a thorough checking once we arrived home and we all passed (tick free, yippee). All in all it was a good time!