Olive Oil Fest (Das Olivenölfest) in Zell am Zellertal

A view of Zellertal

An olive oil festival in the tiny village of Zellertal, on a high hill in the midst of wine country?  I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when the wine merchants and village elders sat around, downing schnapps shooters and playing ‘who’s got the dumbest idea?”

            “We need to have a fest.”

            “Why?”

“Every podunk in the entire country has a fest!  That’s why!”

“Maybe a wine fest?”

Heads shaking around the table.  Someone pipes up.  “Too damn many wine fests already.  We need something….well, I don’t know….something…”

            “How ‘bout a bicycle fest?”

Murmurs of disapproval.  “We live on top of a mountain! What’s the crowd going to look like? Five sweaty guys with legs like fence posts?”

            “Chicken plucking festival?”

            “Dirt scattering fest?”

            “I think you’re on to something.”

            From the far corner:  “Yeah, drugs.”

            “I know, I know…,” a big smile, “Olive oil fest!”  A dead silence descends.  Pondering continues, the silence broken on by the clink of a bottle on the rims of schnapps glasses.

            “Olive oil fest?”

            “Why not?”

            “We don’t grow olives is the main drawback.”

            Enthusiasm brews.  “We could serve fish!”

            “I know there’s a point you’re trying to make, but it escapes me at present.”

            “We could import the oil.”

            Pent up sarcasm. “And afterwards, when we’re stuck with a few dozen leftover barrels?”

“We have a fish fry.”

            “Yeah, we could empty the whole North Sea.”

            “Very funny.”

            “Ok how about a Tibetan music fest?”

            “Holy mother of Bacchus, you guys are getting further off track than a blind tour guide in the Sahara.”

            “Let’s do all three!”  Another round of schnapps magically appears and suddenly it all makes sense.  An olive oil festival at a tiny hilltop village in Germany, where no olive oil is produced, hundreds of miles from the sea, and surrounded by acres and acres of vineyards, serving fish, and musical entertainment with Tibetan chants.

Leave it to the wine merchants and city elders of Zellertal to think outside the barrel!  So far, none have been arrested for hallucinogens.

.

Tins of Spanish Olive Oil

So what happened?  The fest has grown every year!  Last weekend, crowds filled the streets. Long lines queued for wine, beer and fish.  Cars filled every two-lane highway leading to town, and traffic wardens earned enough money to buy vacation homes where the weather is warm and olive trees grow in the yard.  Turns out the merchants and elders weren’t so dumb after all!

Tents sold everything imaginable, including oil from Spain (world’s largest producer), Italy (world’s largest importer/exporter), Greece and Turkey, numbers three and four and Morocco, number eight.  There may have been more, but my curiosity was kicked aside by an overriding thirst for some juice of the grape.  A chilled Portugieser rosé was just the thing.  Hey, this is wine country! 

Portugieser Grapes

Back to olive oil.  Where does the U.S. rank?  A respectable 16^th.  All this acquired from my diligent research, on behalf of my faithful readers.

Here’s a question for you:  besides cooking, salad dressing, and naked wrestling, what else is olive oil used for?  Chapped lips, hand moisturizer, mix with cat food to eliminate hairballs, rub into dry hair to control frizz.

How about hair growth, as in curing hair loss?  I’m kidding right?  Nope. (http://www.md-health.com/Olive-Oil-For-Hair-Growth.html)  According to this article, hair loss is caused by the hormone dihydrotestosterone (DHT) and the production of that hormone is hampered by the application of olive oil to the scalp.  What’s the procedure? you ask.  Rub a small amount of olive oil into your scalp and through the hair.  Cover your hair for about 30 minutes, then shampoo and condition normally.

How about exfoliating your hands and making them look young again?  Coat your hands with oil, sprinkle them generously with salt (coarse salt works best), and go through the normal hand washing motions for about a minute.  Wash your hands with soap and water, then apply a bit more olive oil, or your favorite hand lotion. 

I mentioned fish and Tibetan music.  The fish came pickled, fried, or smoked, in sandwiches, or on the plate, with rolls or a couple of choices of potato salad.  My favorite was fried, with a generous helping of vinegar based potato salad.  Recipe for the potato salad?  Of course.

A couple of pounds of potatoes, peeled, boiled, then sliced and allowed to cool.

½ Cup olive oil

3 Tablespoons to ¼ Cup seasoned rice vinegar

Tasty optional additions:  A heaping tablespoon of your favorite mustard, chopped parsley, or cilantro, chopped green onions.

Mix all the ingredients for the vinaigrette, and toss with the cooled and sliced potatoes.

Now, how about the Tibetan music?  One of the dark and chilly wine caves echoed with music so darkly mystical as to make you want pull out your voodoo dolls and drink monkey blood from human skulls.  Photos from Tibet lined the walls and rested proudly on the oak wine barrels.  Yes, I walked through, but managed to find my way out before slicing my wrists.  This was dark! music in a dark! cave.  Breaking out into the sunshine was like escaping from a creaking coffin. 

Ate well, drank well, and got into a wonderful conversation with two German ladies.  Yes, my significant other/ designated driver was by my side.  The day was glorious and delicious, but no I didn’t buy any olive oil.

Wendelinus Market

Candied almonds, cookies, candy

Italian cookies

The master peeler shows his wares and his skills

Flammkucken, the German version of thin crust pizza

Fresh, herbed focaccia

Ok, fess up.  While you Protestants finish your sodoku, or stare out the window, can any of you Catholics tell me who Wendelin was?  All you backsliders give up?  St Wendelin is the patron saint of plague.  I know.  It was right on the tip of your ecclesiastical tongue, right?

St Wendelin’s history is shaded in the lore and scraps of history from the middle of the first century after Christ.  Apparently, the son of a Scottish king, he embarked on a pilgrimage to Rome.  On his way back, he stopped off in Trier and became a hermit.  Criticized for just hanging out, he took up sheep herding and along the way acquired a heavy rep for curing animals.  When a pestilence hit cattle of the area in the 14^th Century, his intercession was credited with saving the herds.  There’s even a city in Germany named for him, St Wendel.

Way back at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, when local cattle were threatened with disease, one German town held a festival in St Wendelin’s honor.  Services, I’m told, were a relay situation, lasting twelve hours, with participation by several priests.  That was back in 1710.  After enthusiasm died out for twelve hour sermons, not to mention all the wars and pestilence St Wendelin couldn’t handle, the custom gradually withered.

Flash forward to 1986, when the merchants of Ramstein saw a golden opportunity to combine a market day, tradition, religion, and the heartwarming cacophony of cash registers.   Wendelinus Market lives again on Saturday and Sunday of the last weekend in October!

But, even with commercial interests in the fore, at least some remnants of religion and tradition remain.  You can still bring your animals to be blessed.

This year’s festival featured African foods and articles, as well as twenty French stands selling everything from soap to cheese to sausages.

Like any good fest in a German town or village, there was plenty to eat and drink.  The fragrance of hot wine and roasting meat wandered with the crowds down the narrow streets and into the open air of the old market place. With the advent of much lower temperatures, Glüwein was once again in evidence, but also the obligatory wines and beers and schnapps, wursts and potatoes.

Once you go to a German village fest, stroll with a Brat in your fist and a warm Glüwein in your other fist, you’re addicted.  The air is always frosty and clean.  The crowds are always friendly.  St Wendelin would be proud.

A woodturner at work...

...and some of his work

Amazing what you can do with paper and light.

Ribbons for her hair...

Neatest fried potatoes I've seen...and delicious.

Very nice, but at 147 Euros or $195, pretty pricy for a wreath.

Epiphany At An Italian Wine Fest – In GERMANY!

Be sure to scroll down for more delicious photos!

Every day of the year, the moderately sized town of Homburg Saar is hopping.  Markets, fests, rock n roll on Friday nights, jazz on Saturdays, and giant town square TV screens blaring all the big sporting events.  The town government knows that the key to keeping merchants happy and the money flowing is to lure shoppers, music lovers, wine addicts, sports enthusiasts, and the tired and hungry into the town center.  The lures are many. I’ve barely scratched the surface.  Old, classic car clubs hold rallies here.  Motorcycle clubs, too.  There’s a tiny cheese shop on a side street that surpasses most big food chains.  There’s Chili Coffee that breaks out on the old market square and serves as a local hangout and superb meeting point.  Restaurants?  Homburg’s got ‘ a profusion, and especially of the Italian variety, but also fish, Spanish, brew-pubs, Chinese, Asian fusion, etc.

The town’s many Italian restaurants sponsor an Italian Fest each year.  And, suddenly the new market square comes alive with long, red and white tents, a raised stage the size of most high school gyms, beer stands, balloon sellers, and the tantalizing aromas of basil, garlic, and fresh, stone-oven pizza.  The long tents are dotted with attractive stand-up tables and the walls lined with restaurant booths serving your Italian favorites, your Italian new favorites, and an almost bewildering array of wine by the glass, bottle, and case.  You’ll see shrimp as big as bananas, desserts that stagger your taste buds’ imagination, and pasta tossed in huge rounds of Parmesan that will make you long for a bigger stomach.  Hey, you DO have a bigger stomach!  Diet starts tomorrow.  Meanwhile, slosh down some more wine!  Order up!  The fest sprawls out onto side streets and down alleys.

The photos show a sparse crowd.  That’s because I crept into the new market square mid-morning.  In the evenings of this weeklong event, it’s shoulder to shoulder.  But, as always, the crowds are friendly and forgiving of shoulder bumping, hip bumping, and light toe stepping.  They draw the line at groping and fondling.  Wine spilling lingers in that gray area.

We watched some magnificent opera one evening.  The orchestra was a big one, forty to fifty pieces, with a large string section.  Three singers, one woman and two men, took turns belting out the opera world’s favorite arias.  The crowd cheered, whistled and stamped its feet.  Although my knowledge of opera extends only to the brief, but poignant scenes from Cher and Nicolas Cage in ‘Moonstruck,’ after several flagons of wine, the Homburg highlights were some of the most beautiful and inspiring music I have ever heard.  I found my Italian surprisingly improved and I could even sing along, or at least keep the beat with my tongue.

On another day, I listened to some Italian pop music, and on the final morning, as you can see in the photo, an American Air Force combo provided some vintage rock n roll.

Not all the music reached the pinnacles of rapture and in brief moments I relearned a valuable lesson.  In the dark of evening, my buddy and I strolled onto the square, where on stage was an Italian pop band, with a male lead singer and a gorgeous dark haired beauty supplying the doo-wahs.  We ambled over.  I whispered to my buddy, “I want to get to know her and I want her to follow me home.”  As we got closer, this gorgeous creature opened her mouth and out came the most discordant sounds I’ve heard since the braying of my grandfather’s mule.  Even a wailing guitar couldn’t silence her and the drummer couldn’t beat it out of her.

My buddy asked if I were sure I wanted her to follow me home.  Visions of waking up and hearing the croaking of the Wicked Witch of the West flitted across my mind, along with waves of unmitigated nausea.  Then the band stopped playing and my former dream woman stepped off stage and walked by.  Stumbled by was more like it.  She had the grace of a freelance bull, hired to wreck china shops.  “Cancel that order, God! I really want to go home to my loving wife!”  Once again, my prayers were answered and a sinner was saved.

But, enough about me.  Although I do hate to change the subject.  Why so many Italian restaurants in a medium sized German town?  As a personal observation, between when I lived in Germany in the early 80s and now, there have been bursts of ethnic restaurants coming on the scene.  Nothing new with that.  I can remember in the U.S. when you had to go to Texas or points west to get Mexican food.  Now Chinese, Mexican, Thai, even Japanese are pervasive from the small town South to the Midwest and beyond.  Sushi is openly and without shame now a part of the average college food court.

Back to the Italians in Germany and around the world.  In the U.S. there are 18 million of Italian extraction, but countries of South America have even more.  Argentina citizenry is of predominately Italian background, with over 25 million, or about 55% of the population.  It’s the only country outside of Italy that is mostly Italian.  Brazil also has about 25 million people with Italian DNA.  The list goes on and on.  As a matter of fact, there are about 130 million folks of Italian lineage on earth.  Only 60 and a half million of them live in Italy.

Germany has about 700,000 people of Italian ancestry and Switzerland has 800,000.  With the advent of the European Union, of which Switzerland is not a part, people are free to migrate and work wherever they wish, within the Union. Germany and Switzerland are both prosperous and don’t forget Switzerland is tri-lingual, and Italian is one of those languages.

People don’t migrate to less prosperity and Germany’s standard of living is high.  Drive from Germany into France, or Spain, or Italy and you’ll rapidly get a visual on ‘lower standard of living.’  Doesn’t mean any of those places are bad places to live, they’re just not great places if you’re starting a business and looking for patrons who are wealthy enough to help you grow.  Germans have money.  They spend it.

Those are generalizations.  Specifics?  Germans who live in and near Homburg have money.  They spend it.  Lots of Italian restaurants and one of the very best ethnic fests around is the weeklong Italian Fest in Homburg. Mark your calendar for next year, and just remember that not everyone on stage is cute or can sing.  I shudder.

Farmers' Fest in Lambsborn

Hq for garden gnomes

Potato Schnaps

All hand made

Hey, buddy, you're eatin' pork, right?

(After this riveting narrative, be sure to scroll down for more exquisite, mouth watering  photos!)

From now through October is prime fest-time in Germany.  Everybody knows about Munich’s Oktoberfest, which actually occurs in September, but that’s only one of the headliners.  Out in the country, where the real folks live, you can drive yourself crazy deciding which fest NOT to go to.  Wine fests.  Bier fests.  Walking fests.  Pumpkin fests.  Music fests.  Harvest fests.  Seems like every little town and village has something the citizens want to scream to the world about.  For Lambsborn, the pride is in their farmers. The good folks of this rural village know how to show it, complete with a yearly festival to celebrate the fecund fields and the hard work of those who till them, meaning beer, wine and other stuff.

German festivals, at least in the small towns, are joyous affairs.  Friendly crowds.  Lots of smiles. Live music. Vendors flock, bearing everything from ice cream to antiques, top hats to garden supplies.  You’d think in such a slightly populated area of rolling hills and open pastures, you’d begin to see the same vendors at each little fest that pops up.  Not so.  Never know what you’ll find, or who’ll be selling what.  Mirabella plums are in season and at the Lambsborn Farmers’ Fest we found some delightful Mirabella liquor, sold by a guy in a top hat, turning the handle on a street organ.  Here’s a question to ponder over a six-pack, if the man who plays the organ is called an organ grinder, why isn’t the big music box with a crank called a grinder organ?

Besides the wooden spoon sellers, knife sellers, hat sellers, and soft ice cream stands, there was a big field featuring industrial farm machinery, and long open barns where you could pet the cows, goats, and pigs.  Odors de jour.

I think I’m ready to market a line of men’s care products called ‘Excusables.’  When a husband gets home late, or disappears for a Saturday of fishing, or watching sports at a buddy’s house, he only needs to spray on Pig ‘n Trough, Essence of Goat, or Motor Grease-Me.  When he gets the frosty stare from she-who-must-be-obeyed, he can claim, I had to help Elmer squeeze goat udders, or Whizzey change the oil.  Perfect excuses, with scents to seal the deal.  How ‘bout the flat tire excuse?  Try, It Was The Asphalt.

By the time we’d trod through the vendors and the odiferous barn, I began to wonder where all the people were.  I mean, yes, there was a light crowd, but this was supposed to be a once-a-year fest!

Then I got to the beer barn and the spreading cobblestone square, with tents and spigots, and cute little beer maids all in a row.  My worries lofted away on the cow-scented breeze.  Beer.  Check.  Wurst.  Check.  Hellovafest!

Steak with grilled onions, warm potato salad, and noodles

Curry wurst and fries

Grapes in véraison

No snake oil, just delicious Mirabella schnaps

A pleasant ride home.