Sonja

"Seegockel" is a local carnival guild. You need not to understand their traditions. It is like that upper crust Shriner guys with the Fez on your 4th of July parades, only that they strut down Main Road in February in kind of an archaic chicken costume in order to do some who-is-who socializing. Not putting an image of a propper Gockel in his "Plaettleshaes" (which means an allemanic fasnet costume from coloured layered shingles) in there but the baroque fantasy animal for bourgois blazonery that is older than their club actually is a clever idea.

The modern fountain by Gernot Rumpf is quite popular. There are lots of at first random seeming fantasy objects most of which omit water in summer, and all have some deeper background and connection to the town, be it old legends and tales, modern day traditions, the founding and the controlled end of Buchhorn as a medieval market town on it's own, Friedrichshafen as conglomerate of Buchhorn and Hofen, the old income of fishing and salt trade and the industry of course that made it great again and then was almost its total downfall, cogwheels, a motor block and of course hints on the zeppelins and dornier planes.... and this all is seen with a fresh take on it by an artist that is not a local and it is presented not walled or out of reach on a pillar but just in a cobblestone depression so you can walk all winter amongst the sculptures as a photographer, but in summer it is a water playground for the kids. They may ride and pose for the parents on some of the larger sculptures, and of course get soaking wet. But the greater fun as a newer citizen is to reseach all the hints and learn. I moved here as an adult, so missed out on being raised with regional folk lore tails, but I learned a lot by reseaching all the weird stuff displayed in this fountain.