The famous ferris wheel at the Bad Dürkheim Wurstmarkt. | Photo by chireau via 123RF. ()
Just because we expected the news doesn’t take the sting out of it. On July 6, Bad Dürkheim’s city council made it official: the 2021 edition of its mega-event, the Wurstmarkt, will not take place for the second year in a row. What’s widely billed as the world’s biggest wine fest takes place on the second and third weekends of September each year.
According to an announcement posted on the event’s Facebook page, the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic makes it impossible to organize the Wurstmarkt in a form in keeping with the event’s more than 600-year-old tradition. Custom demands it is celebrated wholeheartedly or not at all, and the alternative concepts floated were not convincing. The administration will now task itself with the development and implementation of smaller-scale events in the city center.
The festival, which attracts some 600,000 or more revelers in a typical year, is a nine-day extravaganza of rides, games of skill, food booths, market stalls and vast quantities of wine. In 2019, thirsty visitors downed 300,000 liters of the goodness of the grape.
Who will drink all that wine, which comes from the town of Bad Dürkheim and its immediate vicinity? The town’s winemakers will continue to welcome guests in the comfort of their courtyards, and the Bad Dürkheim tourist office informs would-be visitors of a number of smaller-scale events, from guided hikes with wine tasting in the vineyards to live music in the Mediterranean atmosphere of the Kurpark. Reason enough to visit Bad Dürkheim, the Rhineland-Palatinate’s elegant and fun spa town in a calmer atmosphere!
