Weimar Zwiebelmarkt

Weimar, home of so many important figures in Germany, from Goethe to Schilling, is also the home of a very large onion festival held every Oktober. I went with my German roommate Franzi, and some other international students from the Uni.

It was like a lot of German festivals, with beer tents, lots of food vendors (with lots of onion products), booths selling random things from onion puppets to cookware. Tons of people. It was packed and was hard to move around with the crowd. The fact that they had a 10k race as well going through the city closing off streets, made it even harder.

The best onion food is definitely the Zweibelkuchen: onion cake. There are several variations and we had two of them. One, a cake bread base with spiced onions on top. The other was more of an onion quiche and more filling. The customary drink with Zweibelkuchen is Federweisser, a sweet white wine that is still fermenting in the bottle. It is only available for a couple months out of the year, from August to Okotber normally. It tastes like an alcoholic lemonade, and is very popular in Germany. I don’t think that is available in the States, but it may be with a different name. The grapes used are leftover grapes that aren’t good enough for their high quality wines, but are perfect for a product that still ferments while sitting in the bottles with a loose cap. A cork would cause the bottle to explode with the fermentation in it.

Myself with Franzi my German roomate and Paige, a fellow American, eating Zweibelkuchen with Federweisser

In Weimar, my friend Paige, a person in my program living in Hamburg, met up with us. She had studied in Weimar for 2 summers and knew a lot of the city and was our tour guide. Saw Goethe’s garden house in the amazing Ulm Park. Lots of cool buildings including the amazing Elephant House, the best hotel in town where Hitler came to and spoke on the front balcony.

Weimar was a great city. I like it more that Erfurt. Lots of history, a great park, interesting buildings all over and although smaller, it seemed like there were more areas to go to. I plan on making several trips there as it is less that 5 Euros by train round trip. Perhaps I’ll look for an internship in a restaurant there.

And back to onion and vegetables, lot’s of onion garnishes and decorations at all the stands. But the best thing I saw was actually a garlic schnapps. Surprisingly quite tasty, although the girls said my breathe was horrible afterwards. Definitely something unique to the onion festival.