The Plaerrer

"You've been thrown in the deep end," Geoff, the music teacher, said as he leaned over balancing a bit with my shoulder. Sarah was jumping up and down again and if we weren't careful, Geoff and I would fall off the table and take half the staff with us. And this was before I set Andy's hair on fire. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

The Augsburg Plaerrer which happens twice a year is Augsburg's answer to Munich's insane Oktoberfest. It's much smaller and I'd dare say family friendly and most people who come are locals, not crazy tourists. It's held at a fairgrounds so there are lots of scary, unsafe carnival rides, booths to win prizes, lots of food stalls and three main beer tents.

Our school reserved five tables in one of the tents, but ended up only using two which was just fine by me. I sat with Richard, the PE teacher, Padraig (pronounced "Poor Rick") an upper school teacher, Alke(1st grade teacher) and her boyfriend and other various rotating staff members. Everyone ordered beer but I'm not a beer person so I stuck with my small glass of white wine and ginormous pretzel.

The band for the night was playing a variety of cheesy drinking songs and German 80's tunes with the occassional American 80's hit. The first part of the night we chatted about sports, food, and school stuff. Ika lived in California for a year so we had lots of notes to compare. Our group petered out a bit so we were able to squish (and I mean squish) into one table.

Alke and her boyfriend

Sarah, my 4th grade colleague, had come in her dirndl which matched Dagmar, the drama teacher's, dirndl. Apparently, they had bought them together last year and were very excited to wear them again this year.

Sarah and I with Sarah's husband Vitus in the background

Once we all got to one table the singing really picked up. Standing up on chairs and tables in Germany is considerably more socially acceptable than it is in the US and people had been doing it all night. Now it was our staff's turn. All 13 of us managed to get up on the benches and dance with hand motions, singing along to everything from "If I Could Turn Back Time" to "La Bamba". Sometime after Geoff made his "deep end" comment, the sparklers came out.

Another group with sparklers dancing on the benches

I laughed nervously and told them that in the US, sparklers are basically illegal, especially in the area of California I'm from. They thought this was just hilarious, lit up my sparkler and we were off. Alke's boyfriend and Andy, another upper school teacher, were standing below us chatting and about two minutes into the song is when I noticed Andy's head was on fire. One of my sparks had fallen on his head and with all his hair product had just lit immediately. We got it out right away and Andy was too tipsey to care, but he did lose a little clump of hair which I'm sure he'll miss tomorrow.

Vitus and Dagmar with their sparklers

After that and several more songs, we sat down and chatted a bit (well, Andy, Alke and I did. Sarah, Vitus, Dagmar and Geoff were still dancing, holding hands across the table) and Andy decided I was okay. Apparently, he was concerned I was "stuffy" and was impressed that I came out to the Plaerrer. Inwardly, I rolled my eyes, but thanked him for the gesture of welcome.

Everyone kept apologizing for the cheesiness of it all, but quite frankly, it just reminded me of some of the weddings I've been to in the US(80's band + food and drink) and was actually quite tame compared to other parties I've been to.

All in all, it was fun and a good chance to experience local culture while getting to know people. Ake's already trying to set me up with her twin brother and dirdels aren't looking too strange anymore.

Well, I still have to go to work tomorrow so I'll have to sign off for now.

Tschuess!