Saturday 30 June 2018

Horse Market Parade: Special Moments

This is - I promise! - the last post about the Horse Market parade (at least for this year). Throughout the event, there were special moments which I have tried (more or less successfully) to capture on camera.
See what you make of them!

This first one is the symbol for the entire event "Pferdemarkt" (horse market), not just the parade. It involves a fairground with rides and stalls, a trader's market with everything from hair brushes to instant soup to aprons to novelty toys and kitchen devices, a show ground where various performances of horses and riders can be watched, prize-giving ceremonies for horses, pony riding for children, and - yes, actually - the possibility to buy and sell horses.

The painted horse statue stood in the courtyard of Ludwigsburg palace for a long time. It was stolen or damaged, I can't quite remember which, and a new one was made which you can see here; it looks exactly like the old one:



The next special moment  was one you could also call a typical special Meike moment... because I almost missed it completely simply because I was telling O.K. a story I had told him at least once before and stood with my back to the road... how daft can one be! Well, I can, and therefore I only caught the last of this pack of dogs that were part of a group of riders all dressed as if for a traditional fox chase. 
Until they arrived at the place close to where we were standing, the group had been marching along at the usual parade pace. Then they deliberately paused to create a gap between themselves and the previous group. When the gap was big enough, they made the horses and dogs run - it was pretty impressive, and I could really kick myself for having been so daft to almost miss it! 
(Don't get me wrong; I am absolutely against cruel "sports" like fox hunting and so on. But the sight of a group of neatly turned out riders, polished horses and well trained dogs is something else, and in this case, there was no poor animal involved as their prey.)



This Venetian gondola, complete with gondoliere and a couple in Venetian carnival costumes, was to emphasize the old tradition of Ludwigsburg having a "Venetian Fair" every two years, installed by our Duke Carl Eugen in 1768 - precisely 200 years before my birth :-)
What made this moment extra special was that the couple on board the gondola were singing opera arias at the top of their lungs - and they could sing!



Now here is another group representing a special link from Ludwigsburg's past - a group of "Russian" soldiers. I did talk a bit about our link to Russia here.



This carriage carried a sign informing us that it was an old English mail coach:



The old flag of Wuerttemberg, my home state:



A group wearing costumes based on uniforms from the late 1600s, carrying flags which they later threw in the air to the sound of the drums marching behind them; it looked a lot better in real life than what I can show here with static pictures:






The next special moment is one that I could have just as well placed in the "groups" post, among the "Ludwigsburg international" groups. These people are part of the parade every year; they represent the "Happy Sliders". There still exists a German-American Friendship Club, installed at the time when many Americans were living in Ludwigsburg (the years from just after WWII until the early 1990s, when the American Military base here was dissolved and the military people and their family living in our American suburb Pattonville all left and went back to the US). The group promote square dance and really dance along the route of the parade - no mean feat on such a hot day!







This horse sculpture was created entirely out of old horse shoes, by people who live and work at Ludwigsburg's village-sized facility for the mentally and physically handicapped:



The very last group to end the parade were of a more "artsy" nature than all the others:









Yep, that's it - the Horse Market parade done for another year! I hope you enjoyed these "special moments".

12 comments:

  1. Lovely parade. I love these traditions and lucky you to get such a super day for it.

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    1. I enjoy this kind of tradition, too. Yes, we were lucky this year but of course there have been parades with rain or ending in thunderstorms for some of the 250 times the Horse Market has taken place so far.

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  2. I love the parade! The Horse Parade makes most of our (USA) parades look shabby in comparison.

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    1. As I've never been to a similar event in the US, I have to take your word for it, Jill!

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  3. I like that horse made out of horse-shoes... And that next photo has me wondering - what's up with all these inflatable unicorns?! (cf my own post today!)

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    1. The horse shoe horse is pretty impressive, isn't it! I have no idea what the artsy end of the parade was supposed to mean, but unicorns are everywhere these days, it seems - even though that trend is already ebbing off, with pink flamingos seeming to take their place.

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  4. Pink flamingos are so Sim-like aren't they?!

    Thanks for sharing this lovely event with us, it must be wonderful to attend and even nicer when you get a hot sunny day to enjoy it in.

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    1. They are indeed! :-)

      I have not been to the parade every year, but I try to - it is part of my hometown's traditions, and I enjoy it.

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  5. What a wonderful parade...I'm so glad you shared these last special moments with us. I have a few old horse shoes I've found while walking, but surely it must have been difficult to come up with enough of them to make that amazing statue. We'll have our 4th of July parade on Wednesday in Mayville, NY and I hope we have good weather for it! Looking at all your photos makes me wonder how long it took for the entire parade to pass by.

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    1. Usually, the parade takes about 1 hour to pass by. This year, it took almost 2 hours, as it was a double jubilee: Ludwigsburg's 300th anniversary as a town, and the 250th Horse Market.
      The institution for handicapped people who built the horse shoe sculpture is in touch with many other organisations, local businesses and so on. I am sure they had plenty of old horse shoes from the local riding school and from their own group of horses and ponies, but it still must have taken a long time to get them all together. To design and build the sculpture can't have been easy, either!

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  6. I'm tired just having read your last few posts of the parade! Of this post I liked the English mail coach. For a few Christmases I tried to get my Christmas cards to have one on. The chaps carrying the winged horses must have been happy that it wasn't windy.

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    1. Yes, imagine you have to carry something like that for almost 2 hours on a hot sunny day!
      I was hoping my UK readers would like the English mail coach and my US readers would understand I posted the photos of the German-American club to emphasize that there can be (and is!) friendship between us all on a personal level, even in times of political dissense.

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