I'm currently in Germany for two reasons. The first is because I've wanted to come back to Europe ever since I left it four years ago. The second, and rather more important, is that my good friend Ralf is getting married. Strike that...he now IS married. At least, part way.
So, we got the news last fall that he was engaged and I decided right then and there that I was going to be at the wedding. As it turned out, it wasn't quite that simple, since Ralf and Marlene decided that they were going to pick a date two weeks before the end of my semester. However, I somehow worked it all out, and here I am.
Today was the first day of the wedding. That's right, it's a two day affair. Today was the civil service, which is a quite small affair, and then tomorrow is the big religious ceremony that will be attended by about 160 people. Today was when they go to the equivalent of the city hall (the village...office of bureaucracy?) with only their very immediate family and get married legally. Ralf's parents and his two sisters (with respective boyfriends) were there, as well as a cousin he used to be best friends with when they were young. Marlene's two brothers, her sister and sister's fiance and their baby, her parents, and her grandparents were there. And me and Kara. I felt mildly out of place for a moment. But then they asked me to take a lot of pictures for them and I didn't feel so out of place. Alas, unlike an American city hall, which would be boring and beige and have recessed fluorescent lighting making everyone looked green, their city hall equivalent was...in a crypt? It was in a stone-built basement space that really did seem incredibly crypt-like. Either way, it was really wretched lighting and most of my pictures came out blurry so I won't really be able to help the family out after all. Not to mention, I decided it would be cool to video the actual ceremony, so about three minutes after the dude started giving his speech, once I realized he was speechafying rather than just asking everyone to sit down and shut up, I started recording. I handed the camera to Kara because she had a much better view, but we eventually decided that perhaps we should stop videoing until something interesting happened. Which meant that Kara turned the video off. And then they stood up to exchange vows. Kara ran over to the aisle so she could get a really great shot of the the minister between their two backs and caught the whole thing perfectly. Except she forgot to actually turn the video back on to record. So really all she got was her own nice view of the vows. And Ralf and Marlene have a nice long video of their minister talking forever. I hope he was at least interesting. Alas, I have no idea...
Because I don't speak German. Turns out "lending a hand" is 100% easier and less frustrating when you can actually understand what is happening around you. Kara and I spent a hefty part of this morning just standing around wishing we knew what was going on so that we could help. Even just getting to the hall was hard because no one seemed to know what was going into what car, including us. Also, it turns out that if you get a crowd of Germans in a room and you want them to accomplish something you should give them about 50 times longer than you think they'll really need. We stood around doing absolutely nothing for a solid hour after the wedding service trying to figure out when and where to sit down. Eventually we did sit down to tables that Kara and I had set up the day before for Sabine, Ralf's mother. We ate possibly the most delicious soup on the face of the earth. It looked like this:
Here's a picture of the table settings and Marlene's flowers
Anyway. Enough pictures for now because it is taking forever to load them and I need to go to bed 18 minutes ago. So, after the luncheon Kara and I were put in charge of clearing off and putting away all the tables and chairs, which we completed with admirable swiftness. All of us then trouped home (siblings, parents, significant others, and us Americans) and changed out of our nice clothes so we could go to the other hall where we'll be having the other service tomorrow.
This was where the insanity really began. Remember how I said weddings are a big deal? Remember how I said a bunch of Germans in a room are completely incapable of just getting to work? Yeah, both of these facts were forcibly demonstrated to me today. Along with the conviction that when it comes to setting up tables and chairs and covering those tables with table cloths...just trust the Mormons. Seriously. We have years of experience with these things. We really do know the best way to fit the tables in and still leave room for the caterers. Alas, they did not trust the Mormons, and they were a bunch of Germans (and one of them is a physicist! I should have already known we were screwed!). So we literally spent 40 minutes just trying to figure out exactly where the tables should go. Part of this involved the most perniciously fastidious measuring of distances I've ever seen. Heaven preserve us from a table one or two millimeters out of line! Also, I think there really is some truth to the idea that Americans are obsessed with work. In the time it took Kara and I to fold all 160 napkins (into chicken's feet, if you listen to her, though I thought they looked nice enough) They managed to...put two strips of ribbon on all the tables? I think they also managed to put out a few glasses. Most of the people there were actually eating some of Marlene's lovely chocolate cherry cake, or sitting and chatting. After Kara and I finished the napkins we took over putting out the glasses (water and wine) and trying to make sure that all the wine glasses matched. We kept having to work around the two or three guys who spent pretty much the entirety of the 5 hours we were preparing the hall going around making infinitesimal adjustments to the silverware, chair, and table placements to make sure that they were all lined up absolutely perfectly! I've never seen such obsession over alignment in my life. And so completely unnecessary....
After five hours of this Kara and I were ready to go home. The fact is, there really was only enough work there for about three hours had everyone chipped in and worked hard. Instead we drug it out by an extra two and that knowledge was wearing on the two of us. Except that we realized that probably much of our frustration would have been eased had we known what anyone was saying at any point during the entire process. For one thing we could only ever wait for Ralf or his sister Andrea or Joe (the American exchange student of years gone by) to tell us what to do. No one else felt comfortable talking to the Americans. For another, no one but those three could understand when we made suggestions, so we were pretty much completely ignored every time. But despite all that, when we came back from a trip to the grocery store with Ralf we were forced to admit that the hall did look quite lovely. I will admit that I was worried. There are no less than four different reds on those tables, and not a one of them matching. But from a distance they sort of all blend together and you don't notice so much.
Tangent about the floor: instead of the traditional boards, cut in long strips along the grain of the wood, this floor was made of the perpendicular ends of the boards. That is, if you took the ends of all those long boards and stuck them all in together, you'd have this floor. It was a fascinating pattern of half-arches and I'm going to take a picture of it as soon as we get back tomorrow. Bryan will love it!
Anyway, we finally made it home--all of us wiped out. Tomorrow Kara and I have to get up early so that we can move our things to a neighbor's house, where we'll be spending Saturday night. Some 20 or so cousins are descending upon this house tomorrow, or so we've been told. I can only assume they'll be packed over the floor much like the Africans were on those old Spanish slave galleys back in the 15th century. Kara and I (as well as Kami and Joseph when they return from Berlin) will get a full apartment to ourselves in said neighbor's basement and I'm perfectly willing to relocate for that kind of space and privacy. I believe we'll be back Sunday night, though, since someone in the family is supposed to be driving us to the airport Monday morning.
I'm both excited and nervous for tomorrow. On the one hand, it will be nice to see all our work from yesterday put to use. The ceremony tomorrow is much grander and I think it will be much more comparable to an American wedding. I'm quite looking forward to the experience (though not so much to the open bar, especially combined with the dancing we've been told to expect in the evening). However, the temperature here has been dropping every day and tomorrow is supposed to be the coldest day so far. Of course, the day I'll be wearing a thin little dress! I may die, and I'm sure Kara definitely will. But we'll power through as best we can and hopefully I'll get some great pictures to show you all tomorrow!
Lastly here's a picture of the happy couple just after they were married. I'm excited to see her fer rlz wedding dress tomorrow!
