Oktoberfest 2011

This last weekend, a wonderful little town out in the country, about 15 minutes from where we live, Mt Angel, hosts Oregon's oldest and very popular Oktoberfest celebration. Here's a link to Mt. Angel Oktoberfest website. What better way to kick off the fall than visiting an Oktoberfest - so Saturday we drove on out for a fun family day.

This is only our second time attending the Oktoberfest in Mt. Angel, but it is becoming one of my favorite fall traditions. The first time we went, we loved the "wiener"dog races, so that was our first stop of the day. So many cute little dachshunds running in this race, we just love watching them. Here is a fun little video of one of the races.

It is so cute watching these little dogs so excited to run to their owner, we could watch these races for quite some time.

They have a wonderful area set up at the Oktoberfest just for children- the Kindergarten - filled with lots of fun activities for the kids- petting zoo, magic shows, even a rock wall.

Across from the Kindergarten is a beautiful church- St. Mary's parish Church - they host music performances throughout the day.

The first music performance we saw were the Salzburger Echo Alpine Horns which you can see in the picture below.

The inside of the church was amazing, stunning architecture, beautiful stained glass, my camera does it no justice, but just so you get the idea here is a short clip of the alpine horns and the inside of the church.

We attend a smaller, baptist church, so my kids had not seen the inside of a church like this, it was interesting to share with them some information about Catholic Church. Gary, my hubby grew up as a Catholic and went to Catholic school up to the 8th grade. This church is Neo Gothic, and nearly 100 years old. Here are a few more pictures of the stained glass-

Here is another look at the front of St. Mary's.

We had to get a couple family shots while we were here too.




And check out the construction on the new steeple, can't wait to see what this will look like!!
After watching the dog races, and listening to the beautiful alpine Horns, we were getting hungry- time for some yummy Oktoberfest treats. We all had delicious Bratwurst from a local sausage maker, they were wonderful!! I bought a pack to fix later in the week as well.

And we all shared an Onion Blossom- Gary loves Onion Rings, we all loved the onion blossom!!

There were lots of great food choices, for dessert, we bought these Apfelkuchlen right before we left, to eat on the way home- they were divine!!

Below are some of the wonderful buildings in town- we are teetotalers so no visiting the Biergarten or Weingarten for us- but the buildings were very neat looking.

After food, we explored around a bit more, and listened to some wonderful German music in the bandstand.

I was hoping to see some of the street dancers, and was in luck when this wonderful older couple performed some traditional dances. They were great!!

We also had the opportunity to browse through some vendor stands, Sarah and I loved the traditional dresses!!

After our lunch and listening to some more wonderful music including another concert at St. Mary's we headed home. We had a wonderful time at Oktoberfest, and can't wait to visit again next year.

Here is the link to my post about Oktoberfest 2009