In 1631, the Thirty Years' War, pitching Catholics against Protestants, reached the gates of Rothenburg. Over 60,000 Catholic troops besieged the city, and the Protestants were overwhelmed and had to surrender. This festival is a re-enactment of the siege and the story of the town's survival, which had is based on the legend that the town's mayor accepted the challenge of drinking an enormous flask of wine in order to save its citizens (sounds good to me). The pictures here are from the final parade of the three-day festival comemorating the siege. We stumbled onto this parade outside the door of our hotel in Rothenburg. What a hoot. Most of the parade members were enjoying the tradition of drinking the wine.
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| Parade assembly, outside the gate to the city. |
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| More members of the parade. |
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The guy in the middle is a cop, encircled by members of the re-enactment. He was getting quite a kick out of the attention, not to mention all the traffic stopped in the street because of this dance.
Here is a video clip of the parade. I have no idea if it will work, as I have never uploaded clips to my blog before. |
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| Art and one of the locals. :) |
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| Ditto. :) |
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| The parade had many hundred participants; here are a few. |
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| And a few more... |
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| The parade ended at the Marktplatz, with lots of speeches, singing, and dancing. All in all, I think a good time was had by both the participants and the spectators. |
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