In Ostfildern, which is a bit east of Stuttgart, they have a firework festival every year called Flammende Sterne (Flaming Stars). They invite the top three firework companies from around the world to come and do a firework show. This year, France was Friday night, Canada Saturday night and Germany Sunday night. We went to Canada night with Manu and Doro. We arrived when it was a little bit overcast, but quite warm – around 6:15 in the evening. The first bit of marvelous fun and revelry came when the hot air balloons went up. The official count for balloons was fourteen, although I’m not sure they all made it. I only counted thirteen. I’ve never been to a balloon festival before, so it was fun watching them all slowly rise and float somewhere in the ether above us. The part we missed, but are curious about, is how they begin to get the hot air in. They have frames to hold the mouth of the balloon open while they pump fire inside to fill up the balloon, but what about before the balloon is full enough to support the frame? Do they simply sacrifice a balloon virgin to the hungry god of hot air with every flight? Do they invest in fireproof pyrotechnicky suits for the poor man who has to hold the frame up while the flame blows in? How does this work? Perhaps some of you who have been to balloon festivals before (and gotten there early enough to witness this mystery) can leave a comment and fill me in. Here are some pics. Click on them to see them bigger.

The festival was in a big park, with things sort of spread out. We wandered around a bit. We encountered the part of the park where kids can usually play in water. None of them were, so Flo showed them how it’s done. You can’t see it too well from this photo, but when Flo jumps on the cylinder, water shoots out on all sides.

Of course all the little kids flocked over there once he left and were making right wet messes of themselvs. I’m sure their parents were thrilled.
So there were food vendors and crap vendors and there was one ride (which of course we all went on) and some Native Americans selling their stuff. I had just said to Flo a couple days before, “It’s fair season back home. I would’ve liked to’ve gone.” So we got there and saw all this stuff and Flo said, “It’s just like your fair!” It was! But no fair is complete without fried dough, which doesn’t exist in Germany. Can you believe it, I even found fried dough! It was called Langos and the booth said it’s a Hungarian specialty (clearly they don’t know what they’re talking about). It wasn’t exactly fried dough. It was really close though. There were three things that made it distinct from real American fried dough.
1. It was thicker than fried dough, therefore it gummed up your mouth more instead of delightfully crunching.
2. They offered toppings far more varied than powdered sugar and cinnamon – such as pepper, cream cheese or salami. (For the rest of you who are in horror at the idea of salami on fried dough, remember: it’s Germany. Salami goes with everything here.)
3. They actually had racks to put the already-fried dough in so that it stood upright and the grease drained off. What???!! The grease is the best part. It’s what makes sticky mountains out of the incredibly intemperate amounts of sugar! Anyway, I did have to return to the booth and ask the friendly woman if I might have lots more sugar. She happily complied and then we got Flo a chocolate apple.

After that, we had quite a while to wait. There were some Mexicans who should have done some traditional dance, but there were too many people to see anything. So we walked around and drank a cup of Glühwein, which is hot, mulled wine. Usually they don’t drink it here until Christmastime, but it was cold enough that we had some anyway. There were a couple live bands playing. One of them was a Rolling Stones cover band called Stoned. They were possibly one of the worst festival/fair cover bands I’ve ever heard, and we all know, not a lot of real talent shows up at the Columbia County fair, so I thought I’d seen the worst. There was also a rockabilly band Johnny Trouble and the Rambling Man.

They were actually pretty good. They made you want to dance like Peanuts characters. Then we laid down on this blanket that Manu and Doro brought and waited for the fireworks. God bless them, at least they were prepared. We’d been working on the kitchen all day and weren’t ready for the night. No blanket, no umbrella, nothing. Well, actually, they didn’t bring an umbrella either and our corporate optimism for the weather turned out to be a bit of a bummer, because it did start to rain. We stood up again and put the blanket over our heads, trying to keep dry.
Before the firework show was a half-hour show by a group called Cirque de Feu. The website is in French, but at least there are pictures. We couldn’t see it at all because we were hovered under the beer tent with mobs of other people… which happened to be behind the sound booth. Apparently it’s a bunch of people dressed up like Medieval times, playing with fire. It probably would’ve been cool.
Finally, the moment we’d all been waiting for, the firework show. The Canadian company is called Starlite Pyrotechnics and they’re from Toronto. They did about a 20 minute presentation, set to music from various Canadian artists. The first song was from Enter the Haggis! (Who happen to be from Toronto and happen to be a band I really like.) After that came a bunch of songs I recognized, but have no clue who they were – oh, except one from The Barenaked Ladies, who are a band from Canada that is not Canada’s best-known export, but the one that is most famously Canadian… if that made any sense at all. Anyway, the firework show was amazing. There’s no way for me to do it justice describing it, but it was very cool how they used different poppers for different moods in the music and how good their timing was. I would think getting those babies to go off on beat would be difficult. I mean, we can’t even get most white people to clap on beat, so…. One of the best things was every time a certain firework went off, Doro said, “Oh, that’s so cool. That’s a nice one.” Every time. It was really cute. So here are some pics.

And this next thing has nothing to do with the rest of the blog post, but I did promise it to a couple people, so here is an image of our new, giant wardrobe (8′L X 7.5′H X 2′D). It only took two days to put together. That’s right. Two days. I know it looks like it completely dominates our bedroom. It does. The two glass doors slide and the wooden door on the left opens like normal. My favorite thing about it is that the first night we had it up, Flo got up in the dark to get a drink or something and he tried to walk into the wardrobe door. Luckily he realized the handle was wrong before he literally walked into the shelves and drawers within!

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