Festivals Galore

June marks the beginning of "festival season" in Cincinnati, with one Catholic church after another advertising their weekend-long events. I'm not sure if it's the same in every other big city across the country, but we have dozens we could attend in the course of the summer. And please note, any festival that takes place after August 31st is called "Oktoberfest" so now we're technically in "Oktoberfest" season.

I have found that a really good festival has four main ingredients: Food, beer, games and entertainment. Food choices are usually a combination of hamburgers/hot dogs/brats/metts; slices of LaRosa's pizza, funnel cakes, corn on the cob, nachos with cheese, soft pretzels. Mmmmm.

Games are in two categories: kids games - the easy bean bag toss kind of game, ring toss, duck pond and so on, with all the cheap little prizes - and adult games, like bingo, poker, split the pot and the instants. We actually won $50 on an instant at the OLR Oktoberfest last weekend! We went to the "Taste of Colerain" about a month ago, and they had some really good kids rides - not a church festival, but similar. They even had a mechanical bull -Yeehaw!

As for beer, well, it's consumed in massive quantities - no pictures of any beer guzzling, but trust me, Cincinnatians love their beer. This weekend the Mother of All Festivals is taking place downtown - our annual Oktoberfest Cincinnati. It's a beautiful weekend and I'm sure it's going to be packed.

If you happen to be reading this, let me know if all this sounds familiar. Does your town or city have lots of church festivals all summer long? Or is it just a "Cincinnati" thing? We have a lot of German-Americans in our area so perhaps it's just our heritage.