I will start by apologizing - I forgot to take my camera with me, so I don't have any pictures to share. Which is a shame, because it was a wonderful day.
Thursday was a German holiday, which means everything was closed and everyone (well, mostly everyone) had the day off. This is one huge difference between Germany and the US - when there is a holiday, everything is closed. I believe in the US this only happens on Christmas Day, and even then there are a lot of places which remain open. Not here. The other major difference is holidays are celebrated on the day they happen. So if the holiday is on a Wednesday, everything closes and that's how it is. There are so many US holidays which just happen to fall on "third Thursday" or such. Anywho, the holiday Ascension Day - 40 days after Easter, it is the day Jesus returned to Heaven. It also happened to be Father's Day as well. My landlords were in town with some friends for the holiday. They came over to invite me to celebrate with them on Thursday (the holiday). It was my day off so I figured why not. I really wasn't sure what we were doing to celebrate.
I met my landlords and a group of their friends outside of our house around 11:30. They were all carrying bags or pulling wagons full of drinks and food. It looked like we were going on a picnic. We took off walking. I have recently discovered (thanks to the nicer weather) there are many walking/hiking trails surrounding the village where we live. These trails connect to other villages and weave in and out of the forest/farms. Josh and I went for a short walk the other night - it was absolutely beautiful and so relaxing. Our group walked to the edge of the village and then down a worn path. My landlords, as I have said before, are wonderful people and they tried to make sure I felt comfortable with the group. My landlords and their sons speak English, and there is one other woman (who is extremely kind) that speaks English, but everyone else only speaks broken English (or chooses not to attempt to speak at all). Although I can only understand about 40ish% of what people are saying in German, I didn't really feel out of place. If it was something important or funny, someone would take the time to quickly explain it to me in English.
We walked for about a kilometer before we stopped for a beer break. Yes. A beer break. Everyone opened some sort of beverage and had a drink while we stood around in the sunshine chatting. I have discovered this group of Germans really enjoys taking shots - not exactly the way drunk American college students do, but they have their favorite liquors which they will pass around to take a shot. So with the beer break came a round of shots. At noon. On a some-what random Thursday.
After the first beer break we continued on walking for about another kilometer or two. Then we stropped for another beer break. The woman I was chatting with pointed out something to me which I had not heard before. Our village is right along the 50th latitude line, and there are markers all around to "mark" where the latitude is. I didn't quite realize we were that far north, but I don't know if I've ever been "on" a specific latitude like this before. Maybe it's the geek in me, but I thought it was neat.
We finally made it to our destination, which was a picnic area by three lakes (the Germans called them lakes, I would consider them ponds). Some people had come to the lakes earlier to set up, and there were tables of food and a barbeque set out. The lakes (ponds) are small and somewhat murky, but the area around it is full of green trees and meadows. The beauty of the area definitely makes up for the size of the lakes. For the rest of the afternoon we sat round, ate, drank, and chatted. There were some younger kids there, and they played soccer and ran around. When Josh got off work he joined us. It did, in a way, remind me a lot of my family back home as we have spend many holidays outside just relaxing together.
Although I was highly amused by our walk to the cook-out, the whole day was a fun surprise. As my landlady said to me, "I told you. I like to make party." Indeed, they do.
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