Frühschoppen

well, I tried to find a translation for this very specific German word, but I have to say that I don’t think such a thing exists in English. It’s pretty much a social get together in the morning for a drink (usually beer)… Schützenfeste usually go from Saturdays to Tuesdays and Frühschoppen usually takes place on Monday mornings [and usually goes until the evening :)]. This is usually the best time to meet people that you haven’t seen in a long time, because many like to come to the Frühschoppen..

Since Nina had to work Monday morning, we decided to go there at 2 p.m. [still early enough so that people won’t be too drunk already ;) – if you come later and you’re sober, you can hardly stand the drunk people :)]
We had a really good time, met some more people that hadn’t been there on Saturday night and I collected some more email addresses and phone numbers… we’ll see who will actually write back ;) I had some greasy French fries with mayonnaise and schaschlik sauce *yummy* for dinner and took my parents home at 9:30 p.m.. I had decided not to drink yesterday :) and therefore had the power of being the cab-driver, which basically meant that I had a car and everybody who needed a ride home had to comply with whenever I wanted to leave :)

Yesterday I slept in and in the afternoon I had a dentist’s appointment. Not something I particularly like, but it was ok. They did the usual cleaning procedure – scaling and polishing- and then my dentists said that I had good teeth for living in the US :) He explained to me that he had a patient who had really good teeth, spent a year in the US and came back overweight and with bad teeth (he said that it could be a sign of bad nutrition while living over there)…. fortunately, this didn’t apply to me :)

In the evening, there was yet another procession for the Schützenfest and I went to watch it with my parents, my aunt and my sister. It’s always fun, because the new Schützenkönig will be announced and there is another parade for them. Usually some of the groups decide to make the parade more fun by dressing up in costumes or carrying weird objects (like baguettes, parasols, water wings, floating tires etc. :)). It’s usually a very informal atmosphere on this last day of the Schützenfest.
Afterwards we had dinner at one of the many food stands… very greasy, but sooo good :)

Hugs and Kisses.