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City festival host Sascha Homfeld hangs up the new string of lights, which now consists of LED bulbs. The square as well as the beer and wine garden are illuminated with them. © Thomas Wissner
Linden (nal). The best weather forecast, a sunny setup and two new things are in store for the 36th Linden City Festival next weekend. From Friday to Sunday, the festival will once again take place in the large parking lot between the kindergarten in the city center and the construction yard, with free admission every day.
“This is where the action is,” says city festival host Sascha Homfeld, who is managing the city festival for the second time as sole responsible person. Philipp Arnold V. is once again on hand to help with the setup, helping his friend out of a close bond. Arnold and Homfeld had taken part in three city festivals together, and last year, after the Leihgestern innkeeper family withdrew, Homfeld took over sole responsibility. For him, this is the fifth city festival – and a very special one at that, but more on that later.
Fairy lights now with LED bulbs
When we visited recently, Homfeld, Arnold and helpers were busy setting up the beer and wine garden. A total of 450 seats are available for visitors in this area with classic Bavarian beer garden seating, individual chairs and tables. The ecumenical town festival service will take place in this area on Sunday morning at 10 a.m., followed by the tapping of the keg.
It all starts on Friday and Saturday at 6 p.m. on the large festival grounds. There will be seating for a total of 1,400 people, with 280 benches set up at 140 tables. The Golden Oldies in Krofdorf-Gleiberg brought the equipment from Homfeld to Linden, where it had previously been set up at the village beer garden.
20 large parasols complete the seating. Four bar tents have been set up on the town festival grounds and one for the beer and wine garden area. 40 employees are on duty on each day of the town festival, with service at the tables also planned in the beer and wine garden. “But that also depends on how full it gets,” says the town festival host, asking for forgiveness that they will have to switch to self-catering here too if the number of visitors increases.
On Friday evening, it is the band Mr. Starlight Music & Entertainment that will provide the atmosphere, and on Saturday, the Tom Pfeiffer Band will be performing their “home game” with their “Best of Rock Classics”. On both evenings, DJ Lars will be “ringing in” the after-show party.
Sunday is all about the family. The town festival service takes place at 10 a.m. The Protestant Christ Congregation with the brass band, the Catholic Christkönig Congregation with Sister Lucis Ferstl, the Protestant congregations Leihgestern with Pastor Edwin Tonn and Großen-Linden with preacher Dr. Jürgen Schneider are organizing it.
Afterwards, the traditional morning pint will start with a keg tapping and musical accompaniment by the “Fränkischen Wirtshausmusikanten”. An XXL bouncy castle landscape awaits the little guests from 11 a.m. This year there are four large bouncy castles instead of three as last year. The children’s face painting, led by Homfeld’s wife Isabelle, has also been expanded and has been extended to two areas. Both offers are free for the children. As in the previous year, “Fett & Lecker” from Alten-Buseck will be responsible for the physical well-being with a variety of dishes. A crêpe and ice cream stand complete the food offering.
For the city festival, all 500 bulbs of the fairy lights spanning the large square as well as the beer and wine garden were replaced; the previous 2.5-watt bulbs were replaced by 0.9-watt LED plastic bulbs.
Mayor Fabian Wedemann will welcome 16 guests from Linden’s twin towns Macheren/France and Sosnicowicze/Poland to the town festival, for whom there is also a small program of visits to the region.
The festival host is now Doctor
Incidentally, city festival host Homfeld completed his doctoral thesis at the University of Flensburg 14 days ago and can now be addressed as Dr. Sascha Homfeld. Due to Corona, after successfully completing his master’s degree in sports at the Justus Liebig University (JLU) in Giessen, his doctoral thesis at the Department of Sports Psychology and Training Sciences at the University of Flensburg on the topic of “Psychometric quantification of the influence of sporting activity on mental health in adolescence” spanned five years, as Homfeld reports.
Now he is happy “that everything is done.” And which city festival can call a real doctor its festival host – that probably only happens in Linden.
