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Pumpkin Festival 2013 at Ludwigsburg Palace in Germany

Every year the Ludwigsburg Palace plays host to the “Kürbisausstellung” (aka pumpkin festival).  They have over 450,000 pumpkins on their property!  No they are not just scattered about, they are actually featured as sculptures! One year they had a Dinosaur theme, a Swiss theme, a botanical theme, and this year, a sports theme!
*warning, picture heavy post*

Can you find the word “Sports” hidden in the pumpkins?

Skiers!

She is lighting the torch, I believe

Yes, this takes place surrounding the Ludwigsburg palace property! Look at the beautiful building!

Ever seen such funny look gourds?

What about these ones?

A different look at the skiers

They also had smaller figures too.  Some of these seem like you could try to replicate them at home for your own decorating.

A working Owl and Frog fountain!

Whoooo goes there?

This parrot was very cute!

A bicycle

A horse of course

The swan and alpine goat thing next to her

entire boxing match!

Jamaica has a bobsled team

This is part of the festival.  The thing on the left in front of the pic was a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place trophy winner stand that would play music when you stood on it.

They had rows and rows of pumpkins from all of the world.  What was interesting to learn was that a majority of the pumpkin types are from the USA.

A basketbal player

Even a very large swimmer as you can see

I think this guy was my favorite

You can see white tents in the background with food

Not only did they showcase the pumpkins, but they had different booths with food featuring pumpkin.  We had the pumpkin soup which was delicious.  We also had pumpkin struedel which was also very good.

In addition to food, the day we were there they had… pumpkin boat racing!  I’m not kidding!  The racing occurred inside the large fountain in front of the palace!

The pumpkin boats. As you can see pumpkin boaters get very wet!

go go go! Racing IN the fountain!

close of up a very large gray pumpkin ‘boat’.  Never seen a large gray pumpkin before!

More colorful gourds for purchase!

Never seen these gourds, called “bishop hats”.

What was interesting is that they only had TWO jack-o-lanterns in the entire festival!  You would think with thousands of pumpkins they would have more jack-o-lanterns.  Guess that is more of an American thing!

If you’re curious about the palace… Here’s a view of the front of Ludwigsburg palace.  Can you believe this was originally built as a hunting retreat?  Boy, did those royals know how to spend money!!

It was just starting to rain when I took this picture… had to hightail it back to the car!

Ludwigsburg palace

If you ever make it out to Germany in the Fall, I recommend going here! It was a lot of fun! 

For those of you that can speak German, the official pumpkin festival website is here

The pumpkin festival runs from August 30 to November 3 this year.  

For more information about Ludwigsburg Palace, the English website is here.

Hope you enjoyed these pictures!  I have enjoyed sharing them with you!

Be sure to keep checking back, I have lots of cute Fall posts coming up this month!

Thanks for stopping by!

This post was featured at a Stroll Through Life!

I’ve linked up with The Scoop! Visit Confessions of a Plate Addict blog, Tablescape Thursday at ‘Between Naps on the Porch’, Wow us Wednesdays! at Savvy Southern Style, Open House Party at no minimalist here,  Feathered Nest Friday and Autumn Abounds Party at French Country Cottage, Seasonal Sundays & Oh the places I have been at The Tablescaper, and life of the party at the grant life!and the Autumn Abounds party