Fuzz Martin 0:08
Hallo. Wie gehts?! Was gibts? I finally get to use my German on my show. At least for a sentence or two. Hello, thanks for listening to 15 Minutes with Fuzz or “funfzehn minuten mit Fuzz.” I am Fuzz Martin. It’s hard to believe after last week which was super cold that we’re already heading into festival season. But here we are. I am ready for warm weather, plastic cups of beer and outdoor music. On this week’s show, Marcy Stone of the Deutschstadt Heritage Foundation joins me to talk about Maifest that’s German for May fest celebration that’s going on Friday, May 20 through Sunday, May 22, in Germantown. The festival has been on hiatus for the past two years. So I suggest highly that you go and attend this event in order to show your support. Show them that you’ve missed them terribly since the beginning of the pandemic and help support this great local organization. So grab your stein, kickback, and get set for 15 minutes on my fast with Marcy Stone of the Deutschstadt Heritage Foundation. Right here on 15 Minutes with Fuzz.
Fuzz Martin 1:27
Marcy, welcome to 15 Minutes with Fuzz. Thank you for joining me.
Marcy Stone 1:30
Oh, thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it.
Fuzz Martin 1:32
Before we get started, I have to ask you, Are you German? Yes,
Marcy Stone 1:36
I am German, okay. Unfortunately, I speak no German, my grandparents were German, but they did not wish to, I guess pass that language along to their children or their grandchildren. So no, I speak don’t German at all. Unfortunately,
Fuzz Martin 1:49
I speak German. Well, I speak German, kinda. So I took two years in high school or three years in high school. And then we have some clients here at Epic Creative that happen to be in Germany. And so every so often, we’ll fly over there. And one year, I spent an entire year, doing Duolingo every single day, 10 minutes a day, at least. I had all the points and all the stuff. And I was I was feeling pretty fluent, and then went over there. And all of the people in Germany wanted to speak English to me, because they said they’ve been learning English their whole life at school, and they want a chance to practice. So I didn’t get to use my German. So now it’s kind of atrophied. Anyway, enough about that. You are with a group called the Deutschstadt Heritage Foundation in German town. Please tell me what that organization is all about.
Marcy Stone 2:37
The Deutschstadt Heritage Foundation was created to support the Germanic theme of Germantown, but also to support the community. So it did to improve the academic base of Germantown, and also to support other nonprofit organizations. The German community Scholarship Fund, the canine unit, the sorry, so many different things that we support the American Legion Post, pretty much we get requests from a lot of different organizations in Germantown, the Kiwanis Club when they put on different events, the breakfast was Santa, those types of things, we do our best to support and benefit the local gym and tuck community. Sure.
Fuzz Martin 3:15
So it’s a nonprofit that gives back to other nonprofits and really supports that way. That’s, that’s great. So how long has that been around? It has been around a long, long time.
Marcy Stone 3:25
It has been around and I should know that answer. But I do not know off the top of my head. It has been around for a very long time. Yeah.
Fuzz Martin 3:30
So it’s hard to believe this but Maifest in Germantown is almost here. By the way. Maifest – “Mai” is German for “May,” right. Yep. So what is the Maifest celebration?
Marcy Stone 3:41
Maifest is a traditional German celebration of the arrival of spring. It celebrates a time when hopefully, we can get that winter season behind us.
Fuzz Martin 3:50
Yes. And so we’re recording this a few days before it airs, but it’s cold right now. So we’re still we’re looking forward to the warm. How long has my fest been going on?
Marcy Stone 4:02
So my focus has been going on getting back to Deustschstadt Heritage Foundation question as well. It’s been over 30 years that we’ve had it so there’s the Deustchstadt Heritage Foundation has been around at least 30 years. The custom of my festival dates way back to pagan times. Okay, and it is still celebrated throughout Germany today with Maibombs are the maypole. Okay, I’m decorated with wreaths bows, streamers and dancing around the maypole. We do have our version of a maypole at Maifest in Germantown as well and we do kick off our Saturday celebration with German dancers and the my pole dance.
Fuzz Martin 4:35
I assume that the German dancers and all that they’re all dressed up in traditional garb and such
Marcy Stone 4:40
they certainly are yes, it’s wonderful to see them and just to see the traditional dancing that goes on.
Fuzz Martin 4:45
Did you guys have to take a year off for the pandemic
Marcy Stone 4:48
Oh, yeah, we actually unfortunately had to take two years off. We attempted at first we were going to try to reschedule Maifest into August that first year which of course wouldn’t made a lot of sense but we were going to tried to do it any way. Unfortunately. COVID As we all know, lasted way too long. Yeah. So we had to cancel it completely in 2020-21. We tried to keep a portion of the celebration alive by hosting what we called Maifest in a box. Sure. It was a drive thru celebration where people could preorder boxes that had a lot of the same items that you would get at Maifest. And while the my festival box was successful, we are very excited to be back to our traditional three day event in person this year.
Fuzz Martin 5:26
Yeah, absolutely. A lot of the nonprofits and organizations that I’ve been speaking with that are coming back after a year or two of not having event are very excited to be having their events this year and we are as well. What do you have planned for Maifest? 2022
Marcy Stone 5:43
Well, our community celebration the Germantown we celebrate our German heritage. We start at 5pm on Friday night with German music, and delicious food, including a Wisconsin fish fry. Maybe not all that Germanic, but you have to have it. It’s a staple. Yes, yeah. And then the one truly non German band we have is Bella Cain. They are there Friday evening. They call themselves the hottest top 40 Country group and they will be taking the stage at 8pm to heat up the night and get us through our first evening. Saturday. The celebration continues starting at 11am We go from 11am to midnight with food dancing, featuring the dunk dancers a sheep’s head tournament music by Ed Wagner’s Blaskopel, Alpine blast and the freistaat camera and band.
Fuzz Martin 6:28
That’s a good German words.
Marcy Stone 6:30
I’m not very good at pronouncing since I don’t speak it and then we finish up on Sunday. We start at noon we go from noon to 8pm was dancing by the 10 Zero freistaat dancers the DIA blend up to the up there we go with those words Overlander Overlander dancers, and we continue the sheepshead tournament and finish up with music by the Edelweiss and the Kenny Brent band.
Fuzz Martin 6:51
We talked a little bit about the food but tell us about what kind of food we can expect at my fest.
Marcy Stone 6:56
It is delicious. You can either come and enjoy our traditional German food such as brats, Hungarians, frankfurters. landjaeger Sausage. Oh, let’s see related spatzle German potato salad potato pancakes and lots of delicious homemade German bakery. Excellent. We also have other options for those people who might want to go away from those German food such as hamburgers, nuts, candy, cheeses, and new this year we’ll actually be having some Mexican food served by Mateos materials is a new restaurant that will be opening up in Germantown very soon. They also will be doing our Friday night fish fry.
Fuzz Martin 7:30
Whereas Matteo is going to be open. If you know
Marcy Stone 7:33
Yeah, Mateos is actually owned by the same company that does like a biannual. Oh, okay. Great. And they will be opening up in a strip mall on pilgrim road kind of Pilgrim road and Mequon road. Okay, they are one of our sponsors. So over by the flower source in the strip mall, just south of the flower source.
Fuzz Martin 7:51
Very good. All right, that’s potatoes. Great. I assume that Maifest is a family friendly event. But is it a family friendly event?
Marcy Stone 7:57
It is definitely a family family friendly event. We do encourage families to attend parents to bring their children we will have some areas where they can learn a little bit about German customs and some German words. Like learn about German traditions and truthfully they can just come in F button. Sure,
Fuzz Martin 8:12
sure. Sounds like a fun time and obviously the music and dancing and all that is a lot of fun as well. So when and where does my fest take place in Germantown.
Marcy Stone 8:21
Maifest Festival takes place in Germantown on May 20 21st and 22nd. We will be in the area outside of the Germantown Marketplace II, which is located on the corner of Mequon road and Squire drive in Germantown. If you’ve been in Germantown. It’s behind the Starbucks on Mequon
Fuzz Martin 8:38
road. It doesn’t cost anything to attend typically no.
Marcy Stone 8:41
Friday night, we do have a cover charge Friday evening for Bella Kane. So there would be a small admission charge to get in Friday night. If you’re coming to see Bella Cain other than Friday night there is no charge to attend my fest.
Fuzz Martin 8:52
Do you need volunteers or anything like that? What I assume running an event like this takes a lot of manpower.
Marcy Stone 8:58
It does. So it is run by the Deustschstadt Heritage Foundation, which is a small volunteer organization. As we talked about earlier, we’re all volunteers. There are no paid positions. So all that money that we raise can go back. So yes, we are in desperate need of volunteers. So if you would like to volunteer, please, you can actually just email [email protected]. So my fest is spelled [email protected].
Fuzz Martin 9:26
And where can people go if they want to find out more information about Maifest,
Marcy Stone 9:29
We have a website – maifestgermantown.org where you can go to our Facebook page, we will be putting up the schedule of events both on my fest germantown.org and also keeping current with our Facebook page.
Fuzz Martin 9:40
Excellent. Marcy, thank you for coming in. I hope you have a great time. Gemütlichkeit, if you will. I think
Marcy Stone 9:48
that’s it. It’s a word I was gonna say earlier and stumble over so thank you for saying it because yes, they will. Definitely. We are looking forward to good weather. Yes. And yeah, hopefully it’ll be a success. supplement.
Fuzz Martin 10:00
Perfect. Thanks so much for joining me.
Marcy Stone 10:02
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Fuzz Martin 10:07
Thanks again to Marcy stone of the Deutschstadt Heritage Foundation for joining me today. Again, Maifest happens Friday, May 20. through Sunday, May 22. And thanks to you for listening to this week’s episode of 15 minutes with Fuzz. I hope you enjoyed it. As you always do. If you’re listening on Spotify or Apple podcasts, I kindly ask that you please give the show a five star review. I’d really appreciate it if you did. Also, before I leave you for the week, please be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Google podcasts or wherever you turn to to put podcasts into your eardrums. Sometimes we have to be silly. All right. Have a great week. I’ll talk to you next time right here on 15 Minutes with Fuzz. Tschuss!
