Last Thursday, [Kathy->] and I went to Wurstfest, an annual “Salute to Sausage” and German culture festival in nearby New Braunfels. We had a good time snarfing down schnitzel and potato pancakes, browsing the carnival rides, and watching the leiderhosen-clad septuagenarians dancing to old Teutonic favorites. Musical highlights: Kerry Christensen, an incandescent accordion-playing yodeler, Terry Cavanagh and Alpine Express, a really fun and diverse ensemble, and getting to hear The Chicken Dance three times (and do it twice) in the short hours we were there.

On Saturday, I met up with [Ben->] and took the kids to the Austin Celtic Festival. Predictably, their favorite parts were the SCA combat demonstrations, though the “knights” didn’t let the children whack away at an armored adult as they had in years past. They did, however, have a shooting gallery, where for a dollar players could man a longbow or crossbow and shoot leather-tipped arrows at a line of combatants, who would fall down in Oscar-worthy death throes when hit. The candy-flinging trebuchet was also a big hit with the young ones, as was the reenactment of the Black Knight seen from Monty Python’s Holy Grail. There was a fair bit of good music here too — I have a soft spot for rock bands with bagpipes — but we heard most of it only incidentally as we tried to keep the four kids from wandering off in seven different directions.