a little pumpkin fix

A celebration of fall and that uniquely American urge to wander in a pumpkin patch this time of year led us to the beautiful baroque city of Ludwigsburg and its' annual Kürbisfest today!

We entered the palace grounds from quite a distance and immediately wondered if this was really going to be worth the price of admission....the palace was certainly beautiful and as we walked down the promenade, many of the pumpkins were carved with "welcome!", however, it didn't really seem like it would be that special.

Unfortunately, the 180° turn in the weather (we've gone from cold fall to Indian summer) caused some serious headache issues with Nate so he stayed home to recover.  Incidentally, the palace was built in 1704 and is one of the oldest surviving palaces that remains "virtually unscathed from centuries of tumultuous history".  It also boasts being among one of the largest palaces in Europe! 

Since we came for pumpkins, though, we passed up the palace interior tour, walked thru the gardens and eventually stumbled upon not just a pumpkin patch, but piles and piles of squash of all types and sizes!  Over 400,000 squash were used to decorate the festival!  There were pumpkin (kürbis) sculptures and mosaics all in the 2014 theme of "kürbis royale", pumpkin foods: kürbis burgers (suprisingly good), chutney, jams, wine, oil, seeds, popcorn and more!  

Queen Bee, King of beasts, and the royal jousters

They were missing the ultimate American favorite, though:  not a single pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake or pumpkin cookie to be found!!! Talk about a smashing travesty!

It was totally cool to see the world's largest pumpkin (to date) from Switzerland --2,323 pounds!!!  Makes those 700 pound pumpkins (see Zach, upper right photo) look like apples.   During the final weekend of the fest, they carve up these puppies and give away the seeds!  Hmmm.....this might be a great Christmas gift for my friend's compost pile in Ohio...

We were amazed to watch the experts carve --apparently they don't use the cheap knives that inevitably break when you try to twist them in the pumpkin!  I was totally ready to buy one of these beauties, but they were not for sale.

Exploring more of the gardens, we discovered a children's fairytale land --complete with goats, boats, a cute little train and a dozen or so houses with mechanical dolls telling various wonderful fairy tales!  Our favorite one was the witch from Hansel & Gretel!  

The little window would creak open and that old witch would stick out her head and cackle something horrible in German!  Perfectly scary!  And, as if that wasn't enough, just around the corner, Hansel and Gretel were about to climb into the glowing hot oven!!!!

Lucky for us, we made it home safe!