Battle of the Fraternities

Today is a public holiday in Germany (they have a lot of those here; poor Zev only gets the American public holidays off though!!). As cousin Rachel is visiting from Australia, I decided to take her down to my university town of Tübingen, to watch the annual Battle of the Fraternities (ie: "Stockerkahnrennen"), which is a race on punt boats along the Neckar River in Tübingen.

I love having my cousin Rachel around. We reminisced a little on the car ride down to Tübingen and I told her that when we were very very little (I think I was 3 or 4 and she was 4 or 5), I remember being distinctly impressed by her white sandals with flower cut outs in them. (See Zev, I have had a passion for nice shoes since a very young age! Ha.) I also love Rachel´s gorgeous, curly hair!

I actually ran into a few of my LLM classmates in Tübingen yesterday, and we organized an impromptu get together to watch the race today.

Everyone from the LLM class except 3 members met up in Tübingen this morning and my German classmates, Laura and Philip joined us also.

There were SO many people in Tübingen today (mostly students, as you can tell from the jeans!)

There were some very interesting costumes and "boat scapes" including this one above, that seemed to me to represent a Louisiana Steamboat!???

This boat of the "Royal Wedding" was one of my favorites. They even sang "God Save the Queen" (with cute German accents!) as they went by!

This IS a university town, and so of course there were the "political" punt boats...

The rain held off which was nice. We giggled at the funny costumes and cheered the boats on when they raced by.

Once the race started, the participants had to use their hands to paddle, which made it interesting!

There were a couple of "close calls".....

I have never seen so many people in downtown Tübingen!

After the race, Rachel and I had lunch in the historic Old Town.

Tomorrow we head to the walled city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Hope that you have a good weekend!

Love, Fi xo