Hüpfburgenstadt – Bouncy Castles galore!

This week an entire collection of bouncy castles are visiting Bad Homburg, and on Saturday we decided to take a look for ourselves.

Merry-Go-Round at the HüpfburgenstadtBut what’s so special about a bouncy castle?  Well, firstly this is not just one bouncy castle – but a whole group of them in different shapes and sizes.  Whilst are the more traditional type seen at fun fairs, others are to climb up using ropes or even with holds similar to those on climbing walls.  One even incorporates a water slide.

Climbing Bouncy Castle at the HüpfburgenstadtThere are also two trampolines, a merry-go-round and a stand serving food and drink at reasonable prices.  There is also a special area set aside for children under 6.

And access to all of this only costs a single entry fee.  Since most of the local festivals usually have rides where you pay per go, this does make it rather special – they even advertise with the slogan “let you child ride on the merry-go-round as often as they want to”.

Titanic Bouncy Castle at the HüpfburgenstadtWe spent a pleasant day there and stayed for over 4 hours!

The Hüpfburgenstadt – literally the “bouncy castle town” – is in Bad Homburg until the coming Sunday (13th June).  Details of other locations can be found on www.huepfstadt.de.

Transport Pack 2: Trains

“Transport Pack 2: Trains” is a collection of 4 transcripts, each in their own PDF file. The pack is a ZIP file containing the 4 PDFs and is available from the AllThingsGerman Download Store.

The transcripts in this pack are:

To find out more, visit the AllThingsGerman Download Store.

Looking for a new German president

The role of the President in Germany is largely ceremonial.

He or she is elected not by the people, but by the Bundesversammlung – a rather strange arrangement consisting of the members of the Bundestag (lower house), Bundesrat (upper house), as well as representatives from each state’s parliament.  It is the largest political entity in Germany, currently with 1244 members. The Bundestag members make up 50% of the votes.

And since the amount of votes each party holds depends on their share of power in each of the states, the Bundesversammlung does not necessarily reflect the normal political state of the country as a whole.

When President Horst Köhler resigned on Monday, the wheels were set in motion to calculate the membership for the election of a new president by the end of June.  The German constitution allows only 30 days for this to happen.  Three days later, and despite modern technology those calculations continue.

Schloss Bellevue in Berlin - official residence of the German President (©Can Stock Photo Inc. / claudiodivizia)

Schloss Bellevue in Berlin - official residence of the German President

But why does Germany need a new president in the first place?  Apparently President Köhler gave an interview last week which was – as far as I understand – reported out of context.  He was asked for clarification by some of the major political parties.  And then he resigned.  It all happened very quickly.

In fact, the media has been more interested in the sudden resignation and whether it was necessary, than what he actually said in that interview. [Read more…]

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