Pützchens Markt has opened Pictures and first reports from the famous fair
Pützchen · With only one hammer blow to the festival beer barrel, Lord Mayor Ashok Sridharan has officially opened the 651st edition of the famous fair, Pützchens Markt. The highlight of the fun fair, which runs until Tuesday, is a Rhine-themed night with the band Querbeat on Sunday.
One of the celebrity guests in the Bavaria tent joked that the famous Oktoberfest phrase „O’zapft is“ should become „A’shokt is“ as the Lord Mayor again needed only one blow with the hammer to the festival beer barrel to open the famous fair officially at 4.04 pm on Friday.
The North Rhine-Westphalian fun fair queen Maren-Isabell I. (Brosch) asked the Carnival president Albert Ritter with her hand over her mouth: „So, what’s the Pützchens Markt like?“ The presidential reply: „That, you’ll see in a moment.“ And the charming sovereign from Wuppertal could not help but be astonished: Men in leather trousers and women in dirndls danced to Cologne carnival tunes. What was going on? Very simple: The band Räuber played the „närrisch“ tunes in the local dialect - all carnival themed.
That the carnival and fun fair in Beuel are closely connected, is also caused by the „mother of all traditions“. Ina Harder is not only the „Obermöhn“ of the Beuel women’s carnival, but also the MC of the fair in Pützchen. Despite only having had the premiere of the Bonn revue „Fott is Fott“ at the Contra-Kreis-Theater the night before, she acted the perfect „Hüttenwirtin“ as she always does, thus making the official opening quite glamorous. She manoeuvred artists, politicians and guests across the spectacle. Ina Harder took Yves Sejourrné, Lord Mayor in Beuel’s twin city Mirecourt, by the hand and planked him splash-proof between between Befehl’s District Mayor Guido Déus and the new Bavaria tent host Jan-Patrick Wolters.
Historical festival parade on LED screen in the tent
There was a special premiere at the Pützchens Markt too: For the first time the historic festival parade was shown on a giant LED screen inside the tent. Particularly elderly guests who didn’t want to walk all the way from the Adelheidisbrünnchen (the religious founding place of Pützchens Markt) to the Bavaria tent, benefitted from that service.
The parade itself was a great success as a symbiosis of carnival and fun fair: 36 carny families and 16 carnival and other groups formed a 937-people-43-wagon-strong parade - 960 meters long.
Manfred Krahe, director of the organising friends of Pützchens Markt, said, not without pride: „The eighth historical parade is probably the most diverse, by the looks of it.“ The oldest team in the parade: The 83-year-old carny Jakob Schleifer on his 1936 Hanomag - a picture of joy and cheerfulness at an old age.
But also the younger people were not to be underestimated: Ex-Bonna Party Burgunder had dismissed herself from hospital the day before, where she had to have her fractured arm fixed.
The carousels will spin at the popular fair until Tuesday, September 11. Several highlights are scheduled until then. Like the festival mass in the Bavaria tent on Sunday at 10am. And on Sunday evening the Rhine-themed evening will be celebrated by 2,500 guests from 6pm with bands like Querbeat, Miljö, Kempest Finest and Kasalla. The admission is free.
There was a lot of praise for the extraordinary involvement of the organising friends of Pützchens Markt. For example, Lord Mayor Sridharan called the work „unique“. He also praised the Pützchen citizens and thanked them in the name of the city of Bonn that in the pilgrimage place of Pützchen parties don’t have to end at 10pm.
(Original text: Holger Willcke / Translation: Mareike Graepel)
