Notes from a vacation: August 25
Sep. 18th, 2007 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madbakerWedding Day.
(Previous day here)
We had lunch at the gasthaus with Dieter und Gisele, having the first of many strained conversations. It's difficult to make small talk when you don't speak a common language. The food was good: I had pork with fried potatoes and onions (yummy and heart-clogging) and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bonacorsi had pig in brown sauce. Her green beans tasted like bacon. Which was tasty, but ditto on the heart-healthiness.
Nope, no iron. I steamed the jacket with the shower, but ended up not wearing it... it turned out that the wedding was pretty casual, and I didn't stand out in Oxford button-down, khakis, and no tie. So I didn't need to schlep the damn thing after all. Oh well.
We shared a taxi to Leuchtenberg Castle. It was built around 1221 - the hill, at 400 meters, was the highest spot around. There's a restaurant there (with waitresses in RenFaire dresses and medievalish music - I caught "Gaudete" at one point.) and a museum.
Erik and Ute had a decidedly non-traditional wedding, at least by U.S. standards. The couple were in medieval-style clothes, since he spent a lot of time in the SCA. He grew up in New Jersey and we met him when he was at Stanford; Ute is a German heart/lung specialist who spent some residency time in San Francisco, although they didn't meet until a couple years ago when he started working in Germany. Anyway, they exchanged vows in both German and English, and then repeated, switching. Rather than rings they had bread that he baked and tea she made - Erik joked that they split duties in a gender-appropriate manner: she has short hair and enjoys sports, while he has long hair and handles kitchen duties.
After the vows we had coffee and cakes in the restaurant (a fairly typical German afternoon tea break) and then several hours for a tour. The new bride and groom slipped off to a corner of the castle to have some alone time. We took the tour, which was very interesting. Still some remnants of East Germany: the history talks about the castle as the "administrative center for the region" -- it was the Duke's residence. The tour referred to castle sections occupied by "workers" on one side and "administrators" on the other.
There was a nice reproduction of Cranach's portrait of Duke Johann Friedrich and his wife Sibylle of Cleves (1526) that I think was painted there. Much of the castle was built in the last couple hundred years; since it was on the highest hill, it burned several times from lightning strikes.
We bought some glassware at the museum there: two glasses and a pitcher, more or less in the standard German Renaissance style. I think that they're machine-made, but what the hey. We'll think of our friends whenever we use them at SCA events.
Dinner was a buffet of East German "typical" food: different wursts including blood sausage, lots of cheeses, schnitzel, whitefish in dill cream sauce, fruit... nothing "fancy" but all good. Following the medieval-style theme, the couple had hired an entertainer who travels around Germany and the Czech Republic doing Ren Faires. He started by playing "Follow Me Up To Carlow" on the bagpipe, in 4x time (which he freely admitted is a 19th c. tune). He also played "Twa Corbies" in German on the mandolin... which was translated as "the Three Ravens".
The party went on until 2 AM, but we left around midnight. Despite being low-key, it felt like a long day.
(Previous day here)
We had lunch at the gasthaus with Dieter und Gisele, having the first of many strained conversations. It's difficult to make small talk when you don't speak a common language. The food was good: I had pork with fried potatoes and onions (yummy and heart-clogging) and
bonacorsi had pig in brown sauce. Her green beans tasted like bacon. Which was tasty, but ditto on the heart-healthiness.Nope, no iron. I steamed the jacket with the shower, but ended up not wearing it... it turned out that the wedding was pretty casual, and I didn't stand out in Oxford button-down, khakis, and no tie. So I didn't need to schlep the damn thing after all. Oh well.
We shared a taxi to Leuchtenberg Castle. It was built around 1221 - the hill, at 400 meters, was the highest spot around. There's a restaurant there (with waitresses in RenFaire dresses and medievalish music - I caught "Gaudete" at one point.) and a museum.
Erik and Ute had a decidedly non-traditional wedding, at least by U.S. standards. The couple were in medieval-style clothes, since he spent a lot of time in the SCA. He grew up in New Jersey and we met him when he was at Stanford; Ute is a German heart/lung specialist who spent some residency time in San Francisco, although they didn't meet until a couple years ago when he started working in Germany. Anyway, they exchanged vows in both German and English, and then repeated, switching. Rather than rings they had bread that he baked and tea she made - Erik joked that they split duties in a gender-appropriate manner: she has short hair and enjoys sports, while he has long hair and handles kitchen duties.
After the vows we had coffee and cakes in the restaurant (a fairly typical German afternoon tea break) and then several hours for a tour. The new bride and groom slipped off to a corner of the castle to have some alone time. We took the tour, which was very interesting. Still some remnants of East Germany: the history talks about the castle as the "administrative center for the region" -- it was the Duke's residence. The tour referred to castle sections occupied by "workers" on one side and "administrators" on the other.
There was a nice reproduction of Cranach's portrait of Duke Johann Friedrich and his wife Sibylle of Cleves (1526) that I think was painted there. Much of the castle was built in the last couple hundred years; since it was on the highest hill, it burned several times from lightning strikes.
We bought some glassware at the museum there: two glasses and a pitcher, more or less in the standard German Renaissance style. I think that they're machine-made, but what the hey. We'll think of our friends whenever we use them at SCA events.
Dinner was a buffet of East German "typical" food: different wursts including blood sausage, lots of cheeses, schnitzel, whitefish in dill cream sauce, fruit... nothing "fancy" but all good. Following the medieval-style theme, the couple had hired an entertainer who travels around Germany and the Czech Republic doing Ren Faires. He started by playing "Follow Me Up To Carlow" on the bagpipe, in 4x time (which he freely admitted is a 19th c. tune). He also played "Twa Corbies" in German on the mandolin... which was translated as "the Three Ravens".
The party went on until 2 AM, but we left around midnight. Despite being low-key, it felt like a long day.
