2019-07-19 Day 3 Europeade Festival at Frankenberg, Eder

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Around Europeade in Frankenberg

It rains very heavily in the night and is another overcast morning which, for dancing two spots today is good. We begin with a practice at 10.00am, in costume on our car park, the rain threatens on and off all morning. We go through Medley 2 (Marching to Praetorius) twice, it takes 25 minutes, so about an hour of dancing. We tidy a few bits and pieces up and also practice Powell’s Fancy, our 3-minute display on the big arena stage tomorrow. We finish around 11.30am, the others disperse to the town to get lunch in the big catering marquee.

We eight, sit and eat lunch in out campers, tidy ourselves up in our costumes, fill our water bottles and walk into the town to the street stage at the bottom of the main shopping mall on Barnhoffstrasse. When we arrive, the sun has come out and it is hot, we already have a large audience waiting for us. We dance from 1.30 – 2.00pm in the shade this time with a very appreciative audience. As we are between the shops there are a lot of people passing. We are pleased with our performance which is better than yesterday. We don’t dance again until 5.00pm on the other street stage at the top of the shopping mall and below the Obermarkt square. We all disperse again. Mr C. and I eat ice cream and walk up the hill to Obermarkt square which is full of market stalls and people.

We go into the Rathaus and explore the ground floor of the oldest and one of the most ornate town hall buildings in Germany. Inside it is a large half-timbered hall,the ground floor is an empty space, rather like an old corn exchange – photo below. The town hall rooms (and wedding venue) are upstairs in the fairy tale turrets. We hope to hear the glockenspiel chime a tune, but it doesn’t. We look for the Hexenturm (witches tower) but don’t find it, it may be a longer walk than we want to do. We walk up to the Liebfrauenkirche and go inside for a sit down and quiet time. Inside we find a choir group practising acapella singing for Sunday, it is lively and melodious and good to listen to. We look around the church, built in 1286 in the tall gothic style, with two side chapels added at a later date. It is plain and simple (Lutheran rather than Roman catholic) but has some fascinating cast iron pieces (ornate oven doors from the 1700s), wood carvings by the famous sculptor Philip Soldan (son of Frankenberg) circa 1550 and stone pieces by Tyle von Frankenberg.

We rest then walk the 100m to the top of the hill and the old castle ruin (burned down in 1476). Alan  plays his concertina and we sit under the trees and admire the elevated view across the river valley to the hills beyond. Several locals come and talk to us in stilted English and our stilted German, but it works. Back down the hill to the second performance at 5.00 – 5.30, it is the best so far with a small but very engaged crowd. The Crows dressed in black (mad Morris group) ask us (Jane Austen English dancers) to dance together with the locals, an unlikely combination. We do an impromptu session and get a good crowd up on the stage to dance. Then the Crows do a completely mad display where they blow up huge black balloons, which they put over their heads and fight ‘blind’ with each other with their huge sticks!  Photo of the Crows with ballon below. The crowd love it.

Our hotel group six go for a meal in town, eight of us wander back to the campsite, eat, talk and drink wine. Super day and very convivial evening. The kind of day that makes travelling here worthwhile.

Europeade Folk Festival Day 3

Summary of motorhome journey through Germany and France – no travel today

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