"It's all Greek to me." "Are you Dutch?" "This is a Spanish village." No matter what the idiom, it all comes out as a bit confusing. Our own idiom for last weekend could have been, "It's a German wedding." because we attended a wedding consisting of a German groom, New Zealand bride and guests from three continents (American, Europe and New Zealand). What an adventure in culture!
Highlights:
-H and I drove 10 hours across the whole of Germany. This might sound boring to some, but given that most of it was on the Autobahn (German highway) that only has a "suggested" speed limit, we were able to entertain ourselves.
-We stayed in a lovely pension/guest house stocked with snacks and drinks. But at around 11pm the night before the wedding we decided we needed pizza. With a stack of tourist brochures and a GPS, we found our little hole-in-the-wall diner/pizzeria. It was American style and decked out in Halloween decorations. Tacky and yet so cool!
-Wedding: Beautiful! I loved that the poor town hall officiant who preformed the ceremony apologized at the beginning for being nervous in front of all the foreigners...in German, of course. We foreigners were half the guests.
-Clown car and the German police: The town of Kalkar where our friends got hitched is on the border of the Netherlands. So in the evening, we took advantage of the proximity of the border and headed over the university town of Najmagen for a walk, a look and a drink. We found a cute little bar, enjoyed the atmosphere for a few hours and then headed back to Germany. Due to the Netherlands liberal cannabis laws, the German police often check vehicles returning to their territory (although all European Union borders should be open with no controls).
We pulled over and the policeman asked for our documents. We promptly handed him a New Zealand passport, German passport, American passport and Czech passport. He shined the light in the car, "Anything in this car I should know about?" was his reply. "No, officer, just us."
As the first policeman went to scan our documents in his car, his colleague stayed around for a chat. Our German friend explained it was his wedding day and we crossed the border just to find a nice bar. "You had your honeymoon in Najmagen??" the policeman asked. "Well, if it's your wedding day, then let me go see if I can speed this up a bit." He came back a few seconds later, handed us our passports and wished us a pleasant evening.
-And then we drove home...full of food, happiness, love and friendship.
True love stories never have endings. ~Richard Bach
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