If you were setting up a flute band you wouldn't call it the Bingo Flute Orchestra but a Japanese group of that name entertained the townspeople of Sawabisch Hall on the morning of the Feast of the Epiphany.  I imagine Bingo must be something else in Japanese.

There were about a dozen players and a choir of eight.  They played both western and Japanese music, adding an instrument called a koto for the latter.  It was a lovely concert.  Two of the girls had studied here which I think is the main reason the town was included in their European tour.

After culture came sport, the Three Kings Race around town.

Here I've caught the tail-end of the start.

Swabisch Hall sits in a river valley and rises steeply on either side but especially on the side these hearty chaps (and a few chapesses) were doing their pans in on.  Here they are peching up a hill.

When not covered in athletes and race paraphanelia the Markplatz or at least one side of it looks like this.

I went on a trip to Nurnberg yesterday. It's a much larger place but has a similarly ancient and beautiful old centre. The trip featured a visit to the oodles of cellars dug over the years and at four levels starting way back in the Middle Ages for the storage of beer.

Impressive but not all that interesting.  I'd rather have visited the Albrecht Durer museum.  What was interesting and not a little horrifying was to find that from the beer mash they distill something they have the effrontery to call whisky, and organic single malt whisky at that.

I've still to try it.