photo by flicker user tmivy/Tracie Ivy

For almost a week now, the whole of Hamburg has been a fairground, with rollercoasters, big wheels and all the trimmings.

Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration; but we are talking about a part of the city so big that it kind of gives you that impression. The “Heiligengeistfeld” – also the name of the legendary St. Pauli FC football stadium next-door – is about half a mile long and several hundred yards wide. That makes it big enough to be served by two underground stops – one at each end. Which is a good job, really, since, until the last week of August, the area will be overrun with thrill-seeking teenagers and tourists, as well as the odd local adrenalin addict, like myself.

The whole thing is called Dom, and it’s a phenomenon – a curiously German one.

Everywhere I’ve lived in Germany, there’s been something similar in terms of city fairgrounds. In Düsseldorf, there’s the Rheimkirmes on comparable scale, although it only lasts for a week like the Sent in Münster. Another disappointingly short, but distinctly more crowded affair, is the Cranger Kirmes up the road in Herne, which crams more visitors per day and per square metre in than any other in Germany.

And every year, I make an effort to visit all of them. In view of this fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking that I had a deprived childhood without rollercoasters, candy-floss and warm parental love, as many of my German friends now suspect. Interestingly enough, apart from the neglectful parent bit, that’s not too far off the mark; because, although there are travelling fairgrounds in England, they don’t exist quite on anything like this scale – or in this number.

In my part of suburban London, for example, we had a fairground that came past once a year. They arrived, set up their pathetic little rides, nicked the odd flowerpot out of the garden, took obscene sums of money and then, three days later, promptly pissed off. As for the centre of London, you can forget it. Whilst Hamburg keeps the Heiligengestfeld free the whole year for the three month-long festivities, London lacks that kind of space. And even if it had it, I can’t quite see the landowners willingly allowing 140,000 yards square of prime city real-estate to sit unused for nine months a year in any case.

Neither can I see your average British health and safety officer allowing a full-scale rollercoaster to be built and run from scratch within a week, as two have been in Hamburg in preparation for the summer Dom. No, fairgrounds in the UK are a sorry affair; the only really fast rides available are exiles, stuck in amusement parks miles out in the middle of nowhere: you’ve got a long car journey, a high entrance fee and nothing but horrific queues and bad franchise fast-food to look forward too. Or you go when it’s raining and contract pneumonia eating your home-made sandwiches out in the cold.

So the really superb thing about these German city-centre fairs, if you ask me, is that you can just nip in of a weekday evening, do a couple of very scary rides, and then set off home.

Or, if you’re less antisocial and adrenalin-fixated than me, you can arrange to meet friends there after work. No need to worry if you haven’t eaten; you can always grab something there. After all, this is Germany, so there’s roughly 3.67 food-stalls per visitor.

photo by flickr user Photocapy

For the record, we’re not talking McDonalds and friends here, either; your average German Volksfest, as Dom, Kirmes, Sent and the like are officially called, is a mini-tour of German and international culinary culture. Besides the obligatory sausage stalls (each selling several varieties, of course), there’ll be pizza and kebap vans, French crêperies, Dutch cookie bakers, confectionary outlets of all shapes and sizes and – my favourite – random deep-fat fryer joints serving everyrthing from camembert to cauliflower – deep-fried to artery-clogging, stomach-filling, passer-by-chucking-up-on-from-rollercoaster perfection, of course.

That’s Germany for you. Cauliflower at fairgrounds.

And beer. How I could I have forgotten you, oh sweet enhancer of fairground pleasure, oh gentle soother of a tumultuous stomach, oh national delicacy of the Germans.

There are some moments when you’ve just got to take pleasure in the simple, childish things in life. And there ain’t no place better to do it, in my humble opinion, than on a German city fairground.

photo by flickr user midnightingale

Check out Brian’s amusing and entertaining short video clips on different aspects of German culture here: www.lostindeutschland.de