Prepare for arrival, travelers, we’re coming into Buxtehude, Germany! Located on the Este River, this thousand year old town started as a farming colony, advanced to a trading location, and is now a medium growing, visitor friendly city which preserves its heritage and culture while looking to the future. Buxtehude is often called The Friendly Fairy Tale Capital Of The World, due to it’s being the setting of several tales, including “The Hare and the Hedgehog” by the Brothers Grimm. Here’s a short video with a look around town.
Let’s talk now with Michael about the local steampunk event, Aethercircus Steampunk Festival V.
Schöne Grüße, Michael! Can you share with a bit about your event and how it got started?
Michael : We are the steampunk band Drachenflug (listen to their album here), and in 2012 we held the first Aethercircus Steampunk Festival (and the first steampunk convention in Germany) in Fort Grauerort with the help of many of our friends. It was a great time, and great fun, so we did it again in 2013, 2014 and 2016.
Last year we tried to find opportunities to make the Aethercircus bigger, easier to attend, and tried to find a way to make our convention more interesting for people who never heard about steampunk, too. We know they will love it, but they just don’t know about it now.
We found Buxtehude, a Hanseatic town next to Hamburg, and made a conceptual presentation in the capital hall.
The Altstadtverein Buxtehude is the local promotion association and was interested in the Steampunk Festival.
Now they hold the festival, and we do the booking, program planning and event management.
Your growth over the years is encouraging, and even more so when the town and shops support you, too. When is the festival being held this year?
Michael : Our Event takes place in the whole inner city of Buxtehude on the 28th an 29th April. Entrance is free on every location of the festival.
What a great location in town! Being free and open to the public will definitely bring in many new visitors. As you’ve moved around a few times, how has the festival changed over time?
Michael : We started in a capital hall of Stade town, then we went to an old Fort, now we are in the inner town of Buxtehude.
In the last year, we had just a little bit of money to work with because we did the festival planning with the money our band earned for our shows, hoping to get it back after the visitors buy their tickets.
It worked really well, but we couldn’t grow into a bigger event due to lack of money, local restrictions and the traffic congestion. In the end, we had to take about 25€ for the tickets.
Now the event is free for everybody and it has become a town festival for everyone.
We are very exited to see what will happen this year.
Money is always a bit of an obstacle in creating events. What’s in the lineup for this year?
Michael : We will have a really big music program, historic steam vehicles, a fashion show, many authors, workshops, and a market.
Today I’m not able to tell you all of the news, but we will start to promote the shows and artists in the next weeks.
I’m looking forward to hear about it! Any highlights from the previous festivals?
Michael : Everything was a highlight! We are very proud about the big Steampunk community starting to grow here after our festival.
You’ve clearly won some people over! Fora first time attendee, what could they expect to find?
Michael : A little old German hanseatic harbor town full of Steampunk action and shows in many different location on sea and land.
It sounds so charming and picturesque! How can people stay up to date?
Michael : On the festival there is an app called “Buxtuell“. Here you can get the information about when and where an event starts on our festival.
Beginning in March, you will get all of the information on Facebook, and the homepage of the Altstadtverein https://www.altstadtverein-buxtehude.de
Thanks so much, Michael!
Here’s a little video of Aethercircus 2016 to keep everyone entertained as they make their road trip plans for this year.
Until our next stop, follow the whole steampunk road trip on the Master Link List
Airship Ambassador 