Скачать или смотреть Raw footage: Pützchens Markt, Bonn's annual five-day extravaganza (1)

Pützchens Markt is to Bonn what Oktoberfest is to Munich. Each year, for five days in September, well over a million visitors flock to drink the beer, wolf down the sausages and ride some of the most spectacular thrill rides anywhere. This year, the event has been extended to six days. Watching from the United States, my old friend David Schein has asked: "Is this the missing ancient Rheinlandisch aesthetic root of Las Vegas? I knew it wasn't indigenous." David is dead on, of course. According to a local boast, they've held this fair for more than 600 years. I don't know about that, but some of the employees in the dark ride with the scary theme could be nearly that old. David Schein keeps adding: "I always felt an ancient subliminal Rhenish influence in Las Vegas. Now I am sure. My question is.....(and this could involve a lifetime of research hopefully supported by a German University) how did this unique style of architecture come to the so-called New World and specifically to the desert of Nevada - where there are no rivers, no harbors. My intuition - an armada of floating hot air balloons made from sewn together pig bladders heated by the beery flatulance of Putzchen Party Animals floated over the Ocean, the Appalachians, the Midwest and the Rockies and landed in the desert when the beer ran out."