One fine morning at the Fire Station...

Hi everyone! I'm back again to take you to the past :)

There have been so many adventures I've been able to experience since I've been in Germany, not the least of being the ability to hop on a bus/train/plane and be in another country in an hour. But some adventures happen closer to home. Friends of ours celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in the middle of December. This meant that I got to take part in the big celebration. And let me tell you, it was a lot bigger than I expected.

A few days before the party, the couple's friends get together to make a ridiculously long garland out of pine branches; we're talking 10 or 12 metres long! On that fine Saturday morning we met up at the local volunteer-based Fire Station with a truckload of pine trees, twine and two 12 metre ropes.

It was a fair amount of work, cutting the branches into smaller pieces and tying them to the rope to make the garland. But with lots of friends, coffee, cookies and Glühwein time just flew on by.

The next step is to gather up a whole lot of silver decorations, truck the garlands off to the party locales and decorate them. We put on garland over the door of the hotel where the main party would be, but the second garland was the really fun one.

Quiet as a mouse, you bring it over to the couple's house, and, without being discovered, drape it over the doorway or railing. Once you're just about finished, you start to make a lot of noise to call the couple out for a mini celebration. We pulled out a stone drill and a brick to fool them into thinking we were boring holes into the wall of their house!

Here we are carrying the garland along in the snow - it sure was a cold night to put it up! But, we were rewarded later on with a mug of Glühwein to warm those cold fingers.

As you can see, mittens didn't really work when you were trying to tie the decorations on. So something warm at the end of the night was needed!

It sure was a fun way to celebrate an anniversary and a new cultural experience for me. Living abroad is so much fun!!

Sandy