Not much happens during the day on Saturday but since we were preparing for our own big party, we didn’t really notice. We ordered bread to serve at the party from our local bakery and picked it up on Saturday morning and you could see a bit of the party rush there, already. Most of the bread was sold out by 9 am (which isn’t completely atypical) and there was a line out the front door. It seems that most people take advantage of Saturday morning to get things together for their own parties during the afternoon and evening…and of course recover a bit from the night before if needed.
The actual party kicks off again at 6pm and that was also when we happened to be starting our own party. Little did we know that even through the parade wouldn’t be starting until 9pm, the whole city would be closed off from 6pm until about midnight after the parade ended. This certainly complicated things for our guests who didn’t arrive promptly at 6pm but even though a few of them ended up taking 2 hours for a 30 minute trip, they were still in jovial spirits when they arrived. But what really had us laughing was the fact that they told us if they had read our instructions earlier (we sent out very specific instructions about the detour going around town and how people could still get to us), they would have found us much, much faster. Maybe they at least learned their lesson 🙂
They literally close down all streets into the city and I happened to take the dog for a short walk at 7:45 and had this view looking out of town – if you click to enlarge the photo you should notice a band standing on both sides of the street:
And this view looking up to the Rathaus (local government building) where you can see there was a fire truck blocking things off.
But what I found really fantastic when I was walking around was the number of people who were out in their own courtyards with friends and family having parties. Many people in town put out colored strings of lights on their houses and the fest committee came through a few days before everything started and put up poles to string lights and flags from along both sides of the street where the parade traveled. Talk about a lot of work!
But we did learn a few things from this day alone:
- Throw a MUCH smaller party next year with 10-15 people max.
- Make sure they all arrive no later than 5:30pm so they don’t have to hike a few kilometers to our house or spend 30 minutes circling the entire town as they look for ways to get to our house.
- Take vacation on Monday and Tuesday so we have plenty of time to party and then recover from everything!
