Onion Fair
Weimar’s Onion Fair is held each year on the second weekend of October. It’s Thuringia’s biggest fair and onions are the stars of the show – and they are not merely cooked in flans and soups but also plaited and made into decorations. The atmosphere hots up on the Saturday with a race through the heart of the fair, and there’s live music on five large stages for three whole days. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was apparently a regular visitor to the fair when it was already more than a hundred years old.
The event is also the perfect excuse to discover Weimar. For centuries Weimar was at the centre of Germany’s intellectual life, especially in the early 19th century when it was home to no fewer than three of Europe’s leading intellectuals – Goethe, Schiller and Herder. Weimar won the 1999 European City of Culture and there’s hardly any place in the region that doesn’t, in some way, reflect the town’s rich heritage. For many years, visitors from around the world have flocked to the statue of Goethe and Schiller in front of the German National Theatre or visited one of the town’s 27 museums. The UNESCO World Heritage site ‘Classical Weimar’ comprises 16 individual buildings.