Oktoberfest.

What a hot day. It is crazy weather here this week - today, October 7, was almost 90 degrees with ridiculous humidity. As I have said before, I am not a crowd person, but my husband convinced me to take the boys down to New Glarus today for the Oktoberfest events at the Swiss Historical Village. I think the heat helped keep the big crowds down, and we had a nice time and were able to wander easily with the boys.

New Glarus is a small town, with a Swiss heritage dating back 150 years. Many of the shops - bakery, butcher, gifts, cheeses - also feature German specialties & language, so we visit the town for special events a few times a year.

My husband was wearing his Deutscher Fußball-Bund shirt, and G had on a shirt brought to him from Germany, so a few people greeted us in German, and chatted with my husband a bit, which excited the boys as they primarily hear the language only when their oma & opa visit.

For Oktoberfest, the Swiss Historical Village had people working throughout the buildings - metalsmith, woodworking, basket weaving, sausage making & smokehouse, broom making, printmaking, quilting, soap making, candle making, cheese making, spinning, sauerkraut making, and singers/yodeling. Each building had something interesting to look at, but the boys primarily were interested in the bellows and hot coals for the iron work, the guy making bratwurst in the sausage house, and the vintage fire trucks.

A saw a tractor pulling a wagon and giving tours of the town, so we waited outside for awhile until it stopped at our stop. While we waited, G ran through the cemetery picking dandelions, as I perused the headstones, and town/family histories richly displayed on the headstones.

We hopped off the tractor downtown and braved walking past the biergarten with a lively polka band and busy dance floor to get some nice cold ice cream to cool us down. It was HOT outside. From there we walked back up the steep hills to our car and were relieved when the cool air hit our faces.