Vianden

This town was supposed to be our second of 3 stops for the day. The first was Clervaux Castle, Vianden castle was second and then lastly Boursheid Castle. We found free parking nowhere near the castle, but we could walk it easily and we could see the castle from the parking spot. Once we landed on what we thought and later confirmed to be the road to the castle, we found ourselves puzzled. For what did we see? Well we saw numerous vendors trying to sell their wares dressed up in medieval customs. One bar had rough looking benches and tables with hay strewn about it. I thought at first, that some of the people walking in the crowd were employees to the castle tourism, because they were all dressed up too. But this wasn’t the case, they were all here this weekend, dressed up, to be apart of the annual medieval fair. The walk up the winding street was extremely tiresome. However, when we reached the castle entry, we learnt that the cost of admission went up €2 to €6.50. This didn’t deter us though. On we went into the castle’s court yard to see more vendors and games. Some of the games included archery, crossbow, axe throwing, an old sort of roulette, and a game where you crush an egg on a stump with a round rock. Once we made our way through the masses and vendors, we turned around to actually enter the castle. When this happened, Julie, not holding my hand, was grabbed by a guy in costume asking her if she was married and he basically, wanted to take her away with him. The best part was, we didn’t know what he was saying at first, when I clued in I told Julie and she screamed “No! I’m with him” and clutched me even tighter. The same guy approached Julie 3 times – all off which when she was apart from me. I think she learnt her lesson though, because she rarely let go of me after. It was pretty funny. Since we are on a budget, heading for a drink doesn’t usually happen. But we passed a stairway heading down into what was labeled as a Tavern (it was). We almost skipped it, but decided to go have a quick peak anyway. We were rewarded immediately. There were lines of benches filled with people drinking beer and laughing, amongst this were kegs either standing up on end to be used as tables or on there side for decoration. We made our way to the bar and ordered two beers. One thing I like about Europe so far is that Julie actually found a beer she likes (it’s a fruity beer). We sat right in front of the band that was playing when we entered, but never got to hear them once we sat down. So after our second beer (we had one in the van with lunch before we stepped out) we continued our tour of the castle. The first set of doors had even more “hand-made” wares for sale. While we were walking up some steps we heard drumming from behind us, we turned to see 5 guys dressed up as knights walking through the castle to their own musicians beat. So naturally we turned and followed the group. In a very large room, they all put on a performance of fighting and more music. If you have ever been to medieval times, the fights were like that and they were fighting to the river dance song if you were wondering. So on we went to explore the rest of the castle. In a smaller room, but with very high ceilings, (church part of the castle) a violinist played some lovely music. We proceeded to the upper terrace, to find another band with bagpipes, drum, and two belly dancers, all very entertaining. We finished our tour of the castle, knowing that we spent about 4 – 5 hours longer then we planned too, and we learnt that the town had a medieval parade going on that night so we decided to use our parking space as a free camp zone (we weren’t the only ones with this idea either). On our way out Julie was looking more closely now at some of the venders, most notably, the ones with robes/dresses (€150) and a blacksmith shop. After much convincing by me that she wasn’t spending our bread money, she purchased an iron rose. It was €18, so you could understand her resistance. It was the happiest I have seen her on the trip. We then made our way back to the van to have dinner, drop off the rose and backpack; it was here we confirmed that the other campers were spending the night too. Dinner ran us later then expected so we had to rush off to make the parade for 8pm. However we didn’t see any sign of a parade until nearly quarter after. Feeling still hungry, I purchased French Fries and we split them, found a curb, sat and waited. We couldn’t understand the signs being carried in front of every group, so I’ll just mention the ones that stood out. I guess the first that comes to mind is the “Bring out Your Dead” group, probably because the guy that was approaching Julie all day was in it. They had a little wagon with arms and legs hanging out of it being pulled by a guy with giant scabs throwing a rubber rat. The next group I remember is a band. They were dressed up to look “evil”, you know Mohawks, peircings, etc. They did put out the best music and we tried to capture it with our camera but ran out of batteries. Then they had a group of Knights that periodically would put on shows of sword play. They also had a riffle group that would fire off 3 load bangs, which of course scared the horses directly behind them. Two of the horses had to be taken out (I think the girls riding them were scared about being bucked off). The guy on the first horse stopped for a beer at one of the restaurants, and later when the parade was over he had to take the horse away from the crowd because it was so terrified, Julie was particularly worried. Once the parade was over I convinced Julie to join me in a drink. We walked up and down the strip, but couldn’t find a bar we both liked, so instead we stopped at an outdoor retailer and picked up a beer there, I would like to say that Julie had one with me, but they didn’t serve anything she liked. Not much was going on, so we retreated back to our van, had another beer and talked about our plans for the next few days.