Germany Part II (the wedding)

The whole reason for our visit to Germany was the wedding of Katrin Böttger and Falko - now Falko Böttger-Hiller. I really like that he adopted her name. The traditional reasoning for it is that Böttger is a rare and beautiful name and having only two girls in the family it would be lost.

The wedding was quite spectacular and I'm told a very good example of a traditional German wedding with a number of personal twists. We had an amazing time, as I think Katrin and Falko also did. They are now honeymooning in Egypt.

The event began with a legal wedding ceremony in a castle. This is Julia and Katrin's great-aunt heading up to the castle.

We waited outside for awhile until Katrin and her dad showed up on this little rig.

Here's Falko. No silly worries about the Groom seeing the Bride before the big event.

This is where the ceremony took place. The organ in the corner was played by Bach "no touching!"

Alex, a friend of Julia's played a beautiful medley on the piano. We stayed with him a lot throughout the wedding, and even ran into him afterwards. We're convinced that he must be a relative of Roger Federer... striking resemblance.

Afterwards there was a little parade out of the castle. While they had their photos taken we sampled from the big bottles of champagne and spread of endless h'orderves.

Christian took over as wedding-photographer when the real one mysteriously disappeared.

Then they took off to the church in the funny cart.

Here's a little video.

We didn't get any photos inside the church, but it was an interesting ceremony. Being all in German, a lot was lost on me, but some things were translated by Alex and Christian's friend Anne. There was also a sign-language interpreter which believe-it-or-not was a help to me. Katrin is a trained sign-language interpreter. This clothes-line of baby clothes was strung up before they came out of the church.

Before crossing the line of baby-clothes, Falko threw down hand fulls of coins that all the little kids collected up into baskets.

The scrambling reminded me of the kids at my birthday parties when the pinata broke.

After the coin-toss was the traditional sawing of a log...

... to the music of an organ-grinder.

Then they released a basket-full of doves.

Then off to the reception hall in this pretty thing.

We followed in this big old bouncy bus with a hitch on the back.

Katrin and Falko decorated the hall themselves with pretty arrangements and place-card-holders made out of pieces of wood and beakers (Falko's a chemist). The hall belongs to a German football club, who I guess ended up in fourth place in some big thing or other (see Christian for details).

Entertainment was pretty well non-stop all night. There were speeches, games, a video, a live band, and this pair of professional dancers. The Böttger's are a dancing family. Julia and Katrin are both amazing (Christian and Katrin were salsa partners in Stockholm), but their parents really blew me away. They danced the night away and were truly amazing.

Here's another custom. A loaf of bread and a shaker of salt. One for happiness, one for prosperity I think.

They had to figure out how to open this log-box to find the coordinates for a map that told them where their honeymoon would be. A number of the family members pitched in to send them to Egypt. I love the music.

Oh yeah, did I mention there was a huge fireworks display? It was as big as anything I've seen in Barrie on Canada Day.

I didn't catch it. No gigantic German wedding for me this year.

The bride and groom had to dance off their shoes made of bread. There was no winner unfortunately, I think the bread was pretty solid, but they put in a good effort.

Christian had to get up since he was one of the token North American guests... Falko's hat said something about Obama on it. Christian is trying to suggest that one of the Mexican relatives is more qualified to be up in front of the crowd.

Here's Katrin's parents up there dancing away. It's probably 1am at this point. We left at 3 I think.

Here's Juila and Lars busting a move. I wish I would have taken more videos of the dancing, because they were all really amazing. I danced some latin thing while looking my toes the whole time.

My appologies if this was a long long post, but a lot happened and we had a really great time. Thanks a million Katrin and Falko.

Germany Part I (Altenburg)

So we were in Altenburg Germany from July 23 - 28 for the wedding of Christian's friend Katrin who he met while on an exchange in Stockholm a few years back. We stayed at her parent's house on the top floor and they fed us all kinds of fresh delicious meals. I thought that I would split the trip into three blog entries since we took a ridiculous number of photos, and one entry would simply be too long. I think I'll tell the story with the pictures. As always more photos on flickr.

We took an Easy Jet flight to Berlin since we didn't realize that Ryanair flights land in Altenburg. Notice the little windmills - Germany is jam packed with them. Then a high-speed train to Altenburg.

When we arrived, we walked into a big back-yard party at Katrin's parent's place. There was a big crowd, wedding games, unlimited drinks, unlimited bratwurst (I was particularly excited) and even a few English speakers. This game was probably a lot funnier facing the front of the sheet, but you get the idea.

I'm told that much of Altenburg was spared from war-time bombing, and so there are a number of great old buildings left in-tact. This is the central square - a big wide-open space full of shops and cafes.

This is also in the main square.

Everyone has gigantic window-boxes bursting with pretty flowers.

I have never seen so many cobblestones.

This is the entrance to a tall bell-tower that we climbed. The sounds inside were amazing, we scaled these almost impossibly steep creaky old wooden stairs and the bell started to toll while we were inside. We could feel the reverberations through the stairs and hand rails. I had to cover my ears at one point because it became almost painful.

Here's one of the views of the town from the top. It was sort of a use-at-your-own-risk scenario. It would be easy to topple over the railing or fall down the steep steep steps. The place wasn't plastered with warning signs like you'd see in Canada, but I liked that.

This roof-top greenhouse would fulfill my ultimate fantasy if I lived there. Think I'll find one in Toronto?

We also went to a little zoo that was on an island in the middle of a small lake near Katrin's parent's house.

These guys seemed a little pooched from too much sun.

Christian was a wiz with the camera.

We saw lots of amusing and beautiful animals, but zoo's tend to leave me feeling pretty sad. Christian captured the feeling beautifully in this shot. It's just a little dirt on the window, but it looks like this guy is crying.

After the zoo we went on a good-old-fashioned romantic row around the island zoo. Perfectly romantic if you don't pay attention to the wacky animal sounds emanating from the zoo. The goats made Christian crack up.

In the name of gender equality, I did some of the rowing too. Look at my big guns.

We finished off with some beer and good food at a restaurant by the lake. Christian even found some dark stuff.

I'll finish with a view of the pretty German countryside. Katrin's sister Julia and her boyfriend Lars drove us around a little. P.S. German radio is awesome.

Culzean Castle

On the weekend friends from Carleton Irwin and Lauren visited Glasgow and we went to a castle! They are living in Oxford where Irwin studies and were here for a few days. We took the train to Ayr and then had about a half hour bus ride through the country to Culzean Castle.

The night before, our good friend Giuseppe also cooked an excellent Italian dinner for five at our place, but I forgot to take any pictures.

Below are shots from the castle visit with Irwin and Lauren, they wouldn't let us take any photos indoors though. More on flickr.

Next post... Germany.

Culzean castle.

Castle courtyard.

The views from inside the castle were beautiful too.

Lauren having a look at the ocean.

View from the cafe.

Christian telling analog time.

Irwin and Lauren.

Another view from the cafe.

Christian enjoying the sun.

Scottish pride.

me with wind.

The oldest part of the castle.

Brisk walk back to the bus.