HadashiWorld

it was nice to recognise a lot of people this time and be better able to converse with them. it's painful to stumble along with bad grammar, but as i tell my ESL students, if you're understood, that's the most important thing. in any case, T.T. and i ran a "photo booth" where we took Polaroids of each guest holding up a large picture frame around their heads. the reception was in an old rambling building with a big cobbled courtyard and a fountain in the center, so some of the backgrounds were quite nice. then the photos were stuck in an album and the guest signed good wishes underneath.
other highlights: the guests singing Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69" at the top of their lungs, in heavy German accents, having no idea what they are singing. someone asked me "please, what is 'real six string?'" then there was the stinky cheese course (served around 11:30pm because people are hungry again after all that beer & wine) which then becomes stinky cheese breath people who lean in really close to try to understand your bad German. sigh. oh, did i mention the gay couple deciding to teach the 60+ year olds how to waltz to the song "It's Raining Men?" classic.
Germans apparently love to set things on fire (I could tell you stories for days) and weddings are no exception. of course it’s a rainy enough country, and there aren't regulations, so it seems to be totally legal to set off huge fireworks about 25 ft. away from the guests, or to attach sparklers to helium balloons, light the sparklers, and release the balloons. while it is beautiful to see the night sky filled with floating sparkly lights, it is less fun when the wind blows a bunch into a tree or into someone's head (no harm was done in either case).
we finally escaped at around 2:30 am, after a huge thunderstorm at midnight soaked the entire village. the biggest latenight partiers? all the new moms and dads with small babies, who slept on in a back room while the DJ -- a local celebrity -- kept spinning songs. you should see them shake it, shake it, shake it like a Polaroid picture... yeah, I joined in on that song.

further plans for the next week include seeing a bike race here as part of the big Dudenhofen Asparagus Festival and maybe a castle or two. We’ll head to Cologne to see the bride & groom before they leave on their honeymoon, and visit an aunt. A day-trip to Baden-Baden should be fit in the scehdule, as will be a pilgrimage to Randersacker, a village outside Würzburg, where T.T. was born and lived until junior high. By the way, his shoulder is doing okay; he just feels so out of place in his own body. completely understandable.
well, that’s all for now; tune in next time when HadashiWorld reports back on what it’s like to get naked with a bunch of strangers in a hundred-year-old spa...

* "with the best wishes"