The happiest day of his life

This morning, we took a short hike in Taufkirchen, and it turned out that for the next week or so, there would be the Volksfest – some kind of carnival – at the local Volksfestplatz. In the years we have lived here in Bavaria, the Volksfests were mostly cancelled because of COVID. This year, nothing has been cancelled, and everything must turn back to normal.

Now for some parts, I totally understand that they’re continued. A lot of the activities are outside. For instance, a pretty impressive Oldtimer meetup, which was pretty cool. However, Bavaria being Bavaria, there is usually also a lot of beer drinking and eating in crowded festival tents. We skipped those aspects and grabbed a cappuccino to go instead. It was fun to see how many people wore traditional clothing. I guess about half the people were dressed in Dirndl dresses or Lederhosen shorts. I’m appreciating this preservation of Bavarian culture more and more the longer I live here. I’m even considering buying a pair of lederhosen myself. They look oddly comfortable and somehow kinda cool. Unfortunately, these Volksfest tents are also no question huge COVID fests. I would imagine that a couple of years ago I would’ve greatly enjoyed being there. Now we stayed outside.

Outside was also good. Outside had a carrousel, to my son’s great delight. He had never seen a carousel in his life. We let him ride four times, picking four different cars, and I think for a brief moment it was the happiest day in his life!

After the carousel, he also wanted to try the bumper carts. Heike wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. But I’m not Heike. And Rafa really wanted it. And I really wanted to treat him to his first ride. Heike was right. It wasn’t a good idea. Although he didn’t complain on the ride, he told me about 73 times that he doesn’t want to go into the bumper carts (but he did want to go to the carousel again). The happiest day in his life was short in duration, but it was fun nonetheless.