We had some visitors this week. On Friday, Ray and Susan drove down from Wiesbaden to spend part of the weekend with us. Friday night, we took the train into Stuttgart and had dinner at our favorite restaurant, Abacco’s. The weather had forecasted rain all weekend, but it ended up being dry and warm. After dinner, we went out for drinks on Schossplatz and it was so warm, we sat outside and were able to take our jackets off!
Saturday, we headed to Ludwigsburg, a small city north of Stuttgart. Our destination was the Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival at Ludwigsburg Palace. However, since the weather was so beautiful, it seemed like everyone in Baden-Wurttemburg had the same plan and we had to drive all over looking for parking. We had ended up on the other side of town to park, which gave us a chance to walk through the city for the first time, despite having been to Ludwigsburg Palace a couple of times now.
Ludwigsburg, as it is today, was settled in the 1700s when one of the Dukes of Wurttemburg decided he wanted to build a “country house” to the north of Stuttgart. His royal court soon followed him and the town was built up around the palace, similar to Versailles. Because the whole city sprung up so quickly during one time period, just about the entire city center is built in the Baroque style and the city has the nickname “The Baroque City.” This was our first time walking through and we definitely want to come back to check out more of the city itself.
We finally got to the Pumpkin Festival and as expected it was packed. Every year, there is a theme and this year it was The Jungle Book, so there were lots of sculptures based on the book. All of the food and drink was pumpkin themed and this year we tried roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin beer, pumpkin muffins, and cookies. There was a ton more we could have tried, if we had more time to wait in all the lines. There were pumpkin crepes, pumpkin fries, pumpkin-seco to drink, and much more.
There is also an annual contest to grow the largest pumpkins in Germany so we checked those out, as well as several pumpkin carvings, and sand sculptures.
To finish off the day, we did some pumpkin shopping and for 7 euros, we were able to get an arm-load of pumpkins and gourds- what a bargain!
The weather was so pretty; it was sunny with clear skies and almost 70 degrees- unheard of in Germany in October. There was also no haze, which I don’t think we’ve ever seen since moving here; the sky was the bluest we could remember. We all had a great day and spent Sunday recovering and getting ready for the week. Next weekend, we are off to Berlin!
Gilcrests Abroad 