Volksfest part Zwei

This time I got to go to Volksfest with Arnie for a work party. We traveled with our friends, Brad and Angie and we were all dressed to the nines in our dirndls and lederhosen (which I just figured out means leather pants, duh)!  And yes, they are leather and can't be washed except by professional leather cleaning people. Later on that evening I began seeing the poor planning in this as we had to endure sitting at tables where obsene amounts of beer were being consumed and/or spilled all while people sat, stood, bounced, or danced and yes, much later, lost their balance. 

Again I digress. 

Friday night was when this all took place and the Volksfest was a completely different animal from when I had been there the Saturday before.  The biggest reason for this was that Friday was German Reunification Day, or the day that the Berlin Wall came down reuniting East and West Germany. Traffic was light on the roads that day, I thought, because they had all gone on vacation. No, it was because they all went to the Fest!  It was like wall to wall lederhosen/dirndls mixed with beer.  Not a good combo, I tell you that right now. 

As we elbowed our way to our "tent", the Glockenspiel, a very ill looking girl in a dirndl was being carried out. 

A very,very loud band was playing to a a packed house as harried waiters and waitresses with wistles, shoved people aside, carrying six foot planks covered in plates of half chickens or these large meaty bones that looked like what a caveman would use to knock out a wife. 

They, of course, were also serving beer in large glass beer stiens that would hold a liter of liquid a piece. These people were amazing. One of these glasses is heavy but they could manage up to six or seven of them at a time and not spill as they weaved in and out of a crowd of dancing, bouncing drunk people. 

Despite the noise that made our ears ring and conversation impossible, the terrible smell of smoke, beer, and body sweat, the heat of being packed onto picnic tables with people that were standing and dancing  rather than sitting and being grossed out by the occasional shower of beer being spilled on my head, we had fun.  No, I mean it. The chicken was good and we got to have liters of apfelschorle in our beer steins instead. The band did take a break every once in a while and gave us a reprieve from the noise and I found escape from the heat near the bathrooms. 

At the end, I was happy to go home and wash that experience away.  This experience just served to reinforce the blessings of living a clean life.