Today was Volker and Christine's wedding day so we got all dressed up and drove into the city. The ceremony was being held at the Town Hall or Rathaus which was built in the late 1800s and is very ornate - equivalent to many state capitol buildings and more richly decorated than even some of those. The ceremony itself was held in a special room upstairs which has to be reserved a year in advance. Although the ceremony was in German and was fairly brief, Hedda, Doris, and Susi all explained the gist of what was said and it was all fairly standard although the officiant did take a little bit of time to explain some of the artifacts in the room. Of interest was an unexploded bomb that would have destroyed the Rathaus if it had gone off.
After the wedding and all the photos were taken, there was a champagne toast out on the plaza in front of the Rathaus followed by a brief reception at Volker and Christine's apartment. The official reception will be tomorrow.
The rest of the afternoon was spent being lazy. Roland, Kendra, and I watched Shoot Em Up - a ridiculous, over the top, action movie while Kirsten napped. Roland tried to teach me how to juggle - not successful, at least not yet, and in general we just putzed around.
Later, Roland, Susi, Kendra, Kirsten, and I went out to the Beach Club on the Elbe while Chrissi, Caro, and Karden went to stay with Susi's parents for the night. It was a nice little beach area with cabanas and a large deck with tiki torches, a bonfire, and lots of chairs and benches from which to watch the big container ships cruise up and down the river while drinking beer and eating pizza. So we did that for awhile. Then we left to go back downtown for a bit but not before I took a trip down a giant slide we found just outside the parking lot.
The drive back into the city took us through the Reeperbahn - the red light district which mostly looked touristy and a little predatory. However Roland did point out this back alley that was all walled off with a lot of neon red light coming from the other side and a huge pack of people surrounding that was for men only. The fact that it was walled off was rather creepy and disturbing. But eventually we settled for having drinks at the Hofbrauhaus - an outpost of the Munich original. Aside from Susi - who was our driver for the evening - we all ordered giant liters of beer that came in enormous mugs that at first we wanted to buy but then realized it would take a lot of bottles of beer to fill. We also ordered some sort of delicious dessert that was sort of like a coffee cake but was cut up and jumbled with some nuts and other things. So we ate our dessert, drank our beer, listened to the band play German folk music (with a few American songs thrown in) and watched some of the people around us - making up stories for them and just generally having a great time.
After our liters of beer we were feeling quite full so we drove back to the house and sat around for a bit trading stories and laughs until we finally went to bed after 2am.
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