Duck Race | Crazy Chinese Family

Today we had one of the few Sunday Shopping days in which the city is opened on a holy Sunday. Last year I actually wrote about this so you can find in this article more information about this stupid situation here in Germany and why there are barely any people around on Sundays. This Sunday was also a bit special as we had the yearly Duck Race in the city once again (here the article about it from 2015), we had some Street Food gathering going on and a Classic Car Meeting as well.

This year we skipped the Duck Race and I only took few pictures before the start. It is not because we have no interest in watching it but we have a little puppy who needs to get out around 3pm each day and that is also the time the race would start. We had surprisingly good weather with a lot of sunshine unlike the entire last week which had only storms for us. I would love to tell more about the Street Food gathering but we tried to not get too close to it as it would have certainly ruined our wallets and give us some extra pounds. The only part where my wife was getting weak was the stand with Japanese styled Crêpes but thankfully the waiting line was so absurdly long that she gave up on it.

For me the highlight was the Classic Car meeting. The local club has several meetings each year but somehow I have never visited one. Always something happened such as holidays, too much rain or simply no energy to leave the apartment. It was really interesting to see cars from the last 70 years gathered here. As we are in Germany there were mostly only German brands such as Opel, Mercedes, BMW, Audi (Auto Union) and so on but there were also few US brands, British and French. My brother always wants to purchase a classic car but in the end it is just too much work to maintain it properly and you need also a safe garage as those cars can be really expensive.

This Sunday was finally a day to relax a bit. Funny enough even though we had the Sunday Shopping day we only went around the city to watch all the interesting events rather than going to any shop at all. Tomorrow and the day after we have some big things happening but more about it in next weeks blog post/ some hints on Social Media the next days.

Have you visited a Classic Car meeting?

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Today was the annual duck race in my hometown. As you might have read in many other blog posts is the fact that here in my hometown is barely anything to do with the exception of a few events a year. One might say that they roll up the sidewalks here in the afternoon. This means that having such event is pretty much one of the main activities for the people here. Besides this sunday was also a “Sunday Shopping Day” as normally shops are closed on Sundays. This year marked also the 12th anniversary of this event here and was celebrated with tons of activities for children.

ente11 — Shortly after the start of the event

So what is this duck race? Basically it is a “race” of rubberducks down the pond and stream here in this town. Duck Races can be found all over the world but thus far I have only visited this one here. Any person can purchase a duck for a few Euros and gets a number for the duck. By buying one of this ducks you can participate in this race and have the chance to win some nice things such as a 2000€ travel voucher, a new TV etc. The avail of this event is later on donated to some charity programs.

The race starts by pouring all the ducks from a container which is lifted by a crane into the pond. The pond and the little river have a little race track/ plastic barriers so that the ducks follow a specific route till they arrive at a bridge few hundred meters away. Depending on the weather the whole competition might take 20 minutes or even several hours! This year we missed the start of the race as little Nathan took his sweet time waking up from his nap so we arrived few minutes too late. But we were still early enough to see the beginning of the race when all the ducks were massed up before slowly spreading all over the race track.

ente3 — Ducks racing towards the finish line

The pond and the river are at a little park located in the center of Neumünster and everywhere some attractions were offered for kids. Especially the radio controlled helicopters and ships interested many fathers as well (me included)! Somehow I feel like purchasing an own radio controlled helicopter now myself to harass some of the annoying neighbours but I guess that would be a bad idea…

It is too bad that Nathan is still too young to fully understand everything around him and enjoy some of the attraction for the children such as the jumping castle, some little animals from the zoo or the before mentioned radio controlled vehicles. Anyways this event seems to be going strong and I have no doubt it will still be held once Nathan is old enough.

ente5 — Some of the radio controlled vehicles

Have you visited a Duck Race in your region or during travels?

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