Heinerfest

This weekend in Darmstadt there is a little event called heinerfest. I don't really know if it is celebrating anything...all I know is that there are a bunch of rides on food stands in the innenstadt. Someone told me it was the biggest inner city festival in the world, but I don't think that is true. There were a lot of people and it does shut down the inner city somewhat, but I don't think it's the biggest...

The view going into the innenstadt (Schloss on the right)

I'm down with festivals, but at the same time the only thing that I really do is watch people. In Germany I do a lot of things by myself, just because of lack of friends and because I'm not going to let that stop me. So I wandered around for a while and then I came upon the scare house where they have people standing to scare people. I took this really low quality picture so I don't know if you can tell what's happening here. 

So as people were coming out he would make swiping motions with his sword. I literally sat across the way and watched for about 20 minutes, just laughing nearly every time. The greatest moments were

- Teenage girls, of course

- the parents that were there to 'protect their children' but ended up getting more scared than their children.

- Adults getting scared in General

- the asians got scared every single time

- except once, there was one asian boy who I would say was about 12 years old. He did not get scared, and afterwards he gave the most stoic man-nod I have ever seen

I took such joy from all of this.

                         

I also saw these people, who were playing very south american music, with panpipes and the like. But they were dressed in a very traditional native American way. I actually need someone to clarify whether or not this is an accurate depiction of south americans...or whether or not there were just using the costumes as a gimmick....