Day Four: Dagmar Cup and Renaissance Fair

Friday afternoon was a relaxing day. We BBQed and they had a croquet match. They split all the adults into three groups for three different matches. It ended up that all the adult siblings and Morfar made it to the finals. They wanted to keep the trophy in the family. They play for the famed "Dagmar Cup", a silver trophy. Mormor's grandmother was very into croquet. One day, her family was playing and the grandmother won. After the game, everyone was inside eating drinking and altogether being merry, and they heard one of Mormor's brothers outside practicing. He sadi he wouldn't be beaten by his grandmother and wanted a re-match. Ever since then they have had a family croquet match. Dagmar was the grandmother's maiden name, hence Dagmar Cup.
At the BBQ, the grilled cheese wurst. It was amazing. Germans know how to make a good sausage, and they eat constantly- I'm going to come back twenty pounds heavier, so someone be ready to motivate me to go running.
That night, Maiju and I went into Neuberg for a German Renaissance Fair. It was held in an actual Renaissance village. It has had a ton work done, but it has been around since then. It's held every two years in old Neuberg, and it's a huge event. There were many street performers, and most of them were children. I couldn't resist this little girl dressed in her costume playing her flute on the ground. She was so sweet, so I gave her a few Euros.
Maiju and I found this stage thing with bleachers, and since we had been walking around in a crowd for two hours we sat down to watch two men sparing with swords and shields. They were just practicing for a later show, but it was still pretty cool.
We went to one of the shows they put on. We realized after we sat down that we might not enjoy it as much as we thought we would because of the language barrier, and I was getting ready to ask her if she wanted to leave when it got pretty awesome. The performers starting juggling flaming torches. One woman jump roped with a flaming jump rope. This one boy juggled these metal cage balls of fire.
Towards the end of the show, a man started breathing fire. He did some impressive stunts, but the coolest was when two other performers came out and did it with him. They had one torch and the first man spit on it, then in that explosion another man blew on it, and in that exlposion another man spit on it.
On the drive home, we got lost quite a few times. We were driving back in the dark, so it was difficult to look for familiar streets and landmarks. In one city called Hütting, the road split into three right turns. We tried every single one and each time Maiju had to back out with her huge megavan because the roads were too narrow to turn around. We got some good laughs about that while rocking out to Michael Jackson. He's gotten huge now that he's dead.