Boat Parade

Every year in Ulm, they have a festival. Business close, classes get out early, and everyone goes to the Danube to watch a big boat parade. Did I bring my camera with me? No. But luckily, my friend Andikan did. And he was kind enough to share his pictures with me, so I could in turn share them with you.

This is Linda (left) from Canada, and Wenfen (right) from China. They work in the same lab as Andikan and me. (Andikan is from Wales. He's taking the picture.)

The first boat in the parade.

Here's a better view. As you can see, there is a band on board, performing music (as bands often do).

You don't have to have a big, fancy boat to participate in the parade. Some people are just on little inflatable raft, and some were even swimming.

These guys docked their craft to splash water on the spectators. Notice the beer bottle. It was quite common to see passengers drinking beers in this parade.

The people in the parade also splashed water on each other. It was quite entertaining.

Man overboard!

Check this out. This guy actually rigged his raft so that he could drive his raft by pedaling his bike. But only if he was facing backwards.

More water shenanigans.

The guys with buckets mean business.

These guys have taken a lot of hits. They're starting to sink.

This boat was pretty cool.

Another boat with a band. If memory serves, they were playing 99 Red Balloons.

Some of these boats are making political statements, but even if I could translate them, I still probably wouldn't understand.

Take this one, for example. I'm sure it's hilarious, but I just don't get it.

Ooh, an X-ray effect.

Not too many captions in this post, because I wasn't really sure of what was going on myself, other than that some of the boats looked cool. It was like being a kid, "reading" a book just for the pretty pictures. My next post will be about my trip to Dresden. Tchüs!