Dockville 2010: Friska Viljor rock the dock! (Photo: Nicole Runschke)

After last week’s post about how Germany as a country is unexpectedly well-versed when it comes to BBQing, here’s another post about a thing that Germans are great at, but that isn’t really associated with them – yet.

And that thing is: festivals. Now, when people hear the word festival, they tend to think immediately of Woodstock (USA), Glastonbury (UK) or maybe – if you like your peace-and-love a little more recherché – Roskilde in Denmark. What a growing number of people across Europe are starting to associate with the term, however, are names like Watten, Hurricane, and Melt - some of the continent’s biggest festivals and all of them taking place in Germany.

The word Gleisersatzverkehr is an important word to know in German.  It means “hahahaha, your train’s not coming sucker.”  It also means “there’s construction on the tracks,” “your trip is now going to involve switching between several (slow) buses and trains,” and, literally, “track replacement traffic.” 

I was on my way to Esslingen, a little town (by little I mean approx. 90,000 inhabitants) on the Neckar.  But I was going there via Mannheim, where I could trade in my train seat for a seat in a beat up old police van (no longer owned by the police).  I took the train to Worms, did some transferring and bus riding to circumvent the construction on the tracks, and landed in Mannheim two and a half hours later.