Kaiserslautern in bloom 14-15 March: shopping and events

This upcoming weekend (14-15 March) is the annual event,  "Lautern blüht auf," which means something along the lines of "Kaiserslautern is blooming," is "in bloom," or is "blossoming." It is coordinated by a business association in Kaiserslautern and is a weekend meant to bring shoppers and citizens downtown for store specials, children's activities, performances by local groups, and more. There's even the special event of shopping hours on Sunday, when the stores would normally be closed.


My 2014 visit to included performances by Renaissance pirates; read more here.

2013 was all about a muppet kitty marching band and chasing down the Easter bunny; read more here.

Who knows what 2015 will bring? I'll find out and report.

If you want to attend, here is this year's flyer with the schedule and more pertinent information.

Wolfstein Kulinarische Wanderung

Today my friend and I took the train to Wolfstein, which is north of Kaiserslautern, for the Kulinarische Wanderung. It was a culinary hike through the town, up the hills with lined with farm pastures, and back down again with stops along the way to sample regional wine and cuisine. Shops in town were also open for Sunday shopping (not that the town had a lot of shops, but a few were open as part of the festivities).

It was a wonderful way to enjoy the countryside, get some exercise on the 6K walk, and work up an appetite for the delicious offerings along the way. At the beginning of the hike in downtown Wolfstein, I bought a small wine glass on a lanyard for 5 euros. With that, I could sample wines at the stations for 1 euro per serving and get a little booklet stamped at each place. I won't lie; I felt rather dorky wearing a lanyard, but I feel that way wearing any lanyard. I guess it was slightly cooler because it at least held a wine glass!

There were six stops along the way. As we were walking along, I realized that the town was familiar. We had biked to it during the Autofreies Lauteral Bike Ride last August (read more here). On the route, we stopped at the second stand at the bridge and each enjoyed a bratwurst filled with chestnuts from Metzgerei Frölich. Yes, I normally don't eat meat, but once in a while I'll eat wurst. Don't judge. Anyway, it was amazing and very rich!
 
Our next stop was for flammkuchen at Flammkuchen Serr, next to the horse pastures. It was tasty and I washed it down with a very sweet German white wine from Weingut Wolf. I love sweet whites and it hit the spot!

The line for Flammkuchen.

Seating adjacent to the horse pasture.

From there, we powered up the hill to the Panoramaweg, or the panorama path. It was a beautiful view of the town with several more stops. I had another small glass of white wine at one booth and then pickled mirabelles in Armagnac, a type of liqueur.

Isn't this a lovely view?

Cooking Lachs (salmon) on the wood-fired stove.

 On the way back down to town, we saw these double trampolines (the red one is tiny and hard to see, but it's under the blue one). I had to stifle the urge to yell, "double trampolines! What does it mean? Sooo intense!!" Don't worry; I didn't actually do it.

We finished our culinary hike with a Kalkbergwerk tour of the mines and then rode the train back to Kaiserslautern. It was a lovely day spent drinking wine, eating delicious food, and taking a hike to enjoy the scenery. I heartily recommend it!

--

I read that there will be another culinary hike in Rodenbach coming up on 20-21 September. It would be worth a visit, if only to reuse the dorky wine cup on a lanyard thing ;) (at least I think it's possible to do so, as it looks to be put on by the same organization)  More information is here.

Oh, and don't make the mistake that I did and lose the card that gets stamped at each stop. Apparently one can turn it in at the end with all the stations marked and get a small gift. I missed out on a free bottle of water.

March's Kaiserslautern in Bloom

During the weekend of March 15 & 16, a business association in Kaiserslautern coordinated "Lautern blüht auf," which means something along the lines of "Kaiserslautern is blooming" or "in bloom." I had gone the year before and wrote about it here. I didn't realize that the event is more than just Sunday shopping.

Primroses were available throughout town but this festival is more about the city waking up after winter. Stores were open on Sunday for the special open Sunday shopping and downtown was packed with shoppers in a celebratory mood. Marching bands provided some musical entertainment. Here's a group dressed like...Renaissance pirates, perhaps?

There was also a car show parking along the main shopping street. Strangely enough, it seemed that most were American muscle cars. Down the road from there, a bouncy house for children was set up. I also heard that there was a petting zoo set up somewhere downtown but I didn't come across it.

This program made for a fun day out on a Sunday, when downtown is usually more deserted because stores are normally closed. It was also a fun way to celebrate the upcoming spring.

Verkaufsoffener Sonntage in Kaiserslautern: biker kitties, marching bands, oh my!

This past Sunday was Kaiserslautern's Sunday shopping day, Verkaufsoffener Sonntage. It's a special event because stores usually aren't open on Sundays. The previous trip to Otterberg for their special Sunday shopping day was cute for how small and community-minded it was. Kaiserslautern's shopping day was like a big party; it was raucous and fun!

I met some friends in town in the middle of a cacophony of marching bands, seated bands, and even singers among the main shopping blocks. There was even a giant Easter bunny running around, handing out balloons. E and I wanted a picture with him, because why not, but he was hopping along so fast that we couldn't catch him (Alice in Wonderland feeling, perhaps?). Then we realized we probably looked a bit silly as grown women chasing down the Easter bunny so we let it be.

As we were walking along, we were drawn into a circle of listeners for a marching band. I loved the band's outfits; the musicians looked like a cross between the Muppets, Hello Kitty, and bikers. It was hilarious; they were wearing Muppet-like fur in hot pink and fluorescent green and some of them had frog eyes on. I do love street marching bands so we hung out for a while and enjoyed their festive music.

Hello Kitty and the Bad Frogs were the band. I prefer to call them Muppets Meet Hello Kitty and Kermit, but whatevs.

Very Muppet-like costuming, but with a touch of leather.

Then we ran across a bread cart. German bakeries have some very awesome bread products and often the street bread carts are just as good too. This bread cart was crazy; it had chocolate-covered pretzels (which didn't appeal to me, but I've only started to enjoy chocolate) in addition to regular pretzels, rolls, etc. E bought a roll and we even had a picture with the bread vendor. He was very sweet about it, playing along and letting us pretend that we were the bread sellers. I whispered to E afterward that he probably thought that we were tourists. On thinking about it more, I told her that I guess we kind of are tourists, though I personally have no set "expiration" date for living here.

We visited some stores and tried to dodge the developing rain showers, while enjoying some more marching band music from another band. I pondered the idea of there possibly being a war among the bands, with the music version of a dance off "war." Since we were tuckered out from shopping and bopping to music, we said adieu. On my way home, I was totally chuffed to see that the crazy frog/kitties band had joined up with another band and they were parading together. There was peace between the bands and it was a festive, but wet day.

 This is the band that united later with the other one. They're marching through an older, small part of town that survived the bombing; on the left is the town's only remaining half-timbered building which houses Spinnrädl (the Spinning Wheel), which serves yummy Pfälzisch regional food and is reasonably priced for being a nicer place.

Otterberg Oh My Goodness: Shopping on Sunday

A poster for Verkaufsoffener Sonntag, or Sunday Shopping

 
In Germany, pretty much everything except for restaurants and some gas stations are closed on Sundays. Stores previously would close in the early afternoon on Saturdays, but now that is changing a bit. Laws used to require this but they've been relaxed a bit so Saturday hours, as well as weekday hours, are a bit longer (Kaufland was open until...gasp...9 pm when I stopped by once on a weeknight, but most stores close around 7 p.m.).

Even though stores are usually closed on Sundays, sometimes there are special Sundays when stores in a town will be open. It's actually kind of a big deal and it seems to be quite the novelty. Sometimes there are a special events planned in conjunction with the Sunday openings.

Last weekend, Otterberg was having such a weekend. Since it is only a 10 minutes' drive from home and I had seen many posters to advertise it, I decided to check it out to see what the fuss was about.

Otterberg is a smaller town with about 7,000 residents. The downtown is only a few blocks long and is accessed from the west side of town with a confusing roundabout. The roundabout is confusing because it's so small that it's not incredibly apparent that it's a roundabout until one is almost on top of it. The center part is just bricks that are a different color than the road around it. Most roundabouts have a curb around the middle but this one doesn't.

Anyway, after navigating the roundabout, I parked and visited the stores. There weren't many to see but I stopped by a book/gift store, walked by an appliance store, and poked my head in a shoe store. In one of the squares, there were some food booths set up with crepes, flammkuchen, and of course, sausages. There was also a carousel and even an organ grinder playing a street organ (I was hoping for there to be a monkey as well but I was disappointed on that one).

I stopped at the yarn store that also sold tea. A cute kid was blabbing in German to the store owner, who was smiling and listening to him the way only an indulgent adult can. She handed him some chocolates and sent him on his way. I smiled  about the interlude and she told me something in German. I got the gist of it that he's a kindergartner and is a nice kid so I smiled and nodded. Of course I looked like a ninny when I went to buy some tea later and didn't understand everything she said so she had to tell me in English so it must have been obvious I didn't understand everything she said about the kid. Oh well. As part of the special Sunday shopping event, the store owner gave away a gift with purchase so I received a candle holder and votive.

On my wanderings I also stopped by the church, Abteikirche, which is the Abbey Church. Its foundations have had a tumultuous history -- literally! There was originally a Cistercian monastery but it was toppled after unrest in the region. The Abteikirche was built later. Catholics and Protestants shared the church but squabbled over it so in 1708, a wall was erected between the Catholic area (in the transept) and the Protestant part (in the nave). The wall wasn't removed until 1979.

I enjoyed the day out, including the visit to the church with the interesting and divided history. Otterberg is quite small but they had a nice showing for their Sunday open shopping day.

Handles on the door to the Abteikirche. They have animal motifs.

Cute half-timbered building, a good place to get glasses.

Another building with body parts on it.

Gee, I wonder what services this business offers?

Altes Stadthaus (Old Town House/Hall)