Blogs don't burn

Freimarkt Bremen is not north Germany’s answer to Oktoberfest (although it is, apparently, the biggest regional Volksfest). Nor is it, as some told me, a fun fair. Rather, it’s a sort of strange hybrid between the two—a German folkish tradition meets carnival meets hot mess, complete with a fireworks show that went on for what felt like days; rides that I refuse to go on because those things are built so that they can easily be taken down, people, and oh, gosh, would we all start taking life and limb a little more seriously, please;  and tents that, unlike their Oktoberfest counterparts, contain not rows and rows of tables and liters and liters of beer, but small stations of overpriced (natürlich) booze and dance floors and people of all ages and levels of sanity leaving all and nothing to Freimarkt.

Here’s hoping they can find it somewhere around the Hauptbahnhof* when Freimarkt Bremen leaves the Volk to rest from the fest in two weeks.

*If there is anything more German than setting up the region’s biggest Volksfest around the central train station, I’ve not yet come across it. Possibly excepting the instructive notes left everywhere, always by the “House Lady” in my dorm in Marburg.