At Manderscheid Castle (the one we've visited twice) a Medieval festival is held every summer. Surprisingly, it actually felt like summer, no need for jackets today! Squires in the back, then knights not jousting and, in front, an announcer and the Princess Susanna are coming out ready for the tournament.
The announcer said, in the only English of the whole event, "Be careful all of you who come from undiscovered countries! If you try to go home you will all get eaten by the dragons waiting at the end of the world because we all know the world is flat!"
Here is Princess Susanna! She, to Peanut's great enjoyment, decided that she will join the men in the jousting. Of course that wouldn't have happened but I wish we could understand the announcer because I bet it was funny!
Anyway, the knights that represented many other castles all over Germany, plus the blue clad knight from Manderscheid, demonstrated all sorts of events that showed their skill. Next year we will know when to take pictures and where to sit so we'll get to show you better! It was really fun to see all the things they did; they caught small rings on their spears as they sped past, they threw spears at small targets and they even made it look like they took a girl out of the audience and used her for a target!
After all the preliminary stuff, the red and white knight began fighting over the princess. That was the actual jousting part of the show. They charged each other twice and the young red knight won, woohoo! (That's the white knight lying on the ground in the picture)
There were also some regular knights who walked around the grounds. Children had their own space roped off in front of the grown-ups so they could see and the knights in armour would walk around teasing and (and probably scaring) some of them. They would argue with each other, hit each other with their swords, take kid's hats, just some entertainment for them!
The best part was when they started acting stupid by whacking the stuffed boar used for target practice and another group of un-armoured knights came and fought them off. Everyone loved that, especially since it was close the crowd and they used swords almost as big as they were!
We did other things at the festival; Peanut and Bubbles were able to go listen to an English storyteller and heard a funny medieval story, we explored the castle, searched all the stalls of knick knacks and food even though we knew we wouldn't buy anything and looked at all the neat costumes they had. Actually, Lolo and I are planning to make some medieval dresses for Halloween! Wish us luck!
2 comments:
Sounds awesome! We're sitting here wishing we would have done that when we lived there! Did you start back to school yet?
Not quite yet, we're still waiting for our new books to come in the mail! But we are doing some things like art and history!
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