Thousands stormed the Wels town festival, Rabls “crash” but few saw it

The feared bad weather didn’t materialize, so nothing stood in the way of a successful city festival weekend. After a busy Friday, the people of Wels were in a party mood on Saturday as well. Tens of thousands populated the city center of Wels on both days. With reference to frequency figures, the city marketing spoke of 120,000 visitors, which seems pretty high. Nevertheless, this year’s city festival was better attended than last year when it premiered. After a break of more than 20 years, the mass fun was brought back to life in 2022.

Whoops moment on surfboard

There was a lot for the visitors to marvel at, but only a few saw the hilarious whoops moment of Mayor Andreas Rabl, who tried his hand at surfing in the Sparkasse-sponsored Waterfun Area on the Ringstrasse. We owe photographer Rene Hauser a snapshot worth seeing. The documented crash of the mayor, well preserved in the electronic archives, could one day be used again.

Rabl took his accident, which he survived unharmed, sportively. When the city festival came to an end late on Saturday evening, the mayor gave an all-round positive summary: “The people of Wels have once again proven how important it is to celebrate yourself and enjoy the city with all its possibilities.”

Wels Marketing Managing Director Peter Jungreithmair was delighted, as was Rabl “an incomparable adventure weekend” and didn’t forget to thank the around 100 clubs, companies and organizations. The lion’s share of the success was due to their participation. The stands and hands-on stations were distributed throughout the city center. There were offers for the whole family at over ten locations. From baseball to American football, 16 clubs offered exciting insights into their sports. Five service clubs and cultural associations presented their activities. Five emergency organizations, three children’s clubs and three schools were represented with stands. 14 companies presented their products with spectacular presentations.

rush in front of stages

But the biggest rush was in front of the three stages. 16 acts were counted on both days. The dialect band performed the spectacular finale on the second day of the town festival on the town square “That’s what you want” and then the Austropop cover band Hoamspü. The Welser formation not only delivered musical fireworks, pyrotechnics were used for the first time in a Hoamspü performance.

The clubs were responsible for the culinary art. In addition, restaurateurs took the opportunity to provide the public with food and drinks in the stands and sidewalk cafés.