- dumpling festival -
It is said that there was a world record broken in St. Johann today. Interested to find out what that record was?
Today was the 27th Annual Knödelfest in St. Johann in Tirol. Apart from having a nightmare trying to find a spot to park, everything else felling to place nicely. A quick stroll through town, pay €2.50 for a badge for your entrance fee then it is time to figure out what dumplings you fancy.
The official dumpling site shows the variety of spherical delicacies. Now don’t be fooled though, the dumplings don’t come beautifully plated as shown in the photos with garnish and restaurant quality service. Instead you’ll receive a plastic dish and a plastic fork to knock back your chosen Knödel.
On to the world record… a number of restaurants set up through the towns high street from the Gothic church to the other end of town. There is one long table 300m which stretches the length of the festival and there is our world 
record. Not overly exciting but apparently a record none the less. Unfortunately I’m a stickler for rules and the gaps in the table to let people cross the street seems like a bit of cheat to me!
Eventually we found a spot at the long table and settled in. First up was beer (obviously), food could come later. We enjoyed a Weißbeir and then ordered ‘one of each’ of the nearby restaurants choice dishes. One was a dumpling filled with pig fat or ‘Grammel’ which translates to crackling another was a pork based mince and the third was an extremely sweet one with jam in the middle. The savoury ones were served with a dollop of sauerkraut. I might not have painted the best image of the dumpling however, they really were tasty.
After strolling around for a bit, listening to the local bands and watching the Schnapps fuelled people pinballing up and down either side of the long table we grabbed another dumpling each. A local farmers ham dumpling with a mushroom sauce with a helping of red cabbage, this one was a good 9 out of 10. The event started around 1 o’clock and was due to finish around 10ish so we were guessing there would a few sore heads in the morning.
For us though, we departed early as tomorrow is due to be a full day mountain biking in the area and some much needed sleep was on the cards.
