One day it was just there, on the field outside town where the Gypsies camp when they pass through. The circus. Circus Barelli, billing itself as Germany’s second-largest circus (after the Bundestag?).

(By the way, I highly recommend visiting their site!!!)

It is a large circus, with many trucks and trailers. The tent is colorful and 25 meters tall. Impossible for a strong-willed six-year-old to miss, in other words.

So we went. One rainy night we went. Yes, as a special treat, we went after our daughter’s normal bed time. She was keen on that. She couldn’t believe her luck. We had free tickets. The circus, you see, hands out free tickets when they arrive in town.

Well, free. “Free” tickets. Free, depends what you mean by free. Free as in, free for one adult. First of all, the kid pays full fare. Still, we get in free! Yeah, cotton candy / fairy floss and so on will cost you etc. But what the hell, how often does the circus come to town?

Well, free. They were called free tickets, said right on there, “Freikarten” but that means, in circusspeak, ten Euro off. Says right there on their website, which you absolutely really should visit if only for the little ringmaster cursor chaser.

“You want HOW MUCH?” I asked the lady at the window selling tickets, who happened to be the circus boss too. She just ignored me and waited for me to pay. She’d obviously done this frequently in the past.

“Just pay the lady, honey.”

“You know how fucking much she wants? Free tickets, pah.”

So we went in. Big tent. Very cool.

“Daddy, can I have a…” “NO! You know what this cost me already? No you can’t have any peanuts, cotton candy or…”

“…a flashing green disco light?”

“No flashing green disco light.”

Big circus. They had a live band. My daughter and I discussed where we’d put the various areas – kitchen, bedroom, living room – if we lived in a circus tent year round.

Various animals came out and did things. One neurotic long-horned bull tried to gore the four shapely dancing girls wearing red sequin bikinis and red harem pants slit ankle-to-waist with sequined hairornaments and strings of pearls every time it circled the ring, but they were used to it and shimmied out of the way each time it passed.

A man stood in the center of the ring and cracked a whip at the animals to make them behave. There was much cracking of whips in general. Eh, German circus.

A very tightly packed woman – as if a large woman had been packed under high pressure into a medium sized woman – with blonde hair pulled back tightly into a braid, the largest false eyelashes I’ve ever seen – and many, many sequins rode two horses around, one at a time. Cracking of whips. In general, though, the animals were well-treated and looked very healthy and happy.

A clown picked people out of the audience for humiliation, triggering my lifelong fear of being picked out of the audience by a clown, but I was spared.

The Eastern European acrobats were pretty good. A man jumped off a low tower onto a seesaw, shooting a young dishwater blonde woman with good abdominal definition in a blue top and very short blue hotpants into the air, where she did twists and flips and rolls before landing on his shoulders.

Later they did the Wheel of Death, which was impressive. The woman wore a more flattering red sequin bikini this time.

Almost forgot the contortionist. She had a poetic act. It was like a traditional circus trying to do Cirque du Soleil or however that is spelled. Wait, I’ll do a google search… Good guess, I got it right. She was in a tight outfit, white with silver I believe, climbing around a silver hula hoop that was raised fifteen meters into the air. Swinging and stuff.

Horses and cows ran around. In the middle, they had a 20 minute break for the kids to pet the animals. Only