Wenn getanzt wird, will ich führen
Apr. 8th, 2013 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaSo, this year Good Friday saw me getting up hideously early and fighting my way through the crowds at Heathrow. I've never flown at Easter before. I think my advice is "don't". Queues. More queues. Queues to join queues. Heathrow had clearly expected an influx, and arranged extra holding pens for grumpy tourists. What they hadn't done was point out to their staff that explanations really help. Just shouting at people "go over there" isn't useful. I want to check in for a Lufthansa flight. Accordingly, I head for the massive Lufthansa check-in sign. If you want me to go the opposite way and walk through a door labelled Cyprus Airlines you really need to tell me that that's actually where the back of the Lufthansa check-in queue is. Cue a lot of quite stressed staff and quite stressed passengers.
Having arrived the recommended two hours before flying, we queued for two and a quarter. Fortunately, it seems the plane was queueing somewhere as well.
My dance team, Mabel Gubbins, was heading away to Hamburg. North British Sword, a very tweedy gentlemen's team, had invited us to join them on their Easter jolly. All arriving on different flights, we all piled into a pre-determined bar opposite Hamburg's central railway station before going for a little stroll around. Everyone else hopped on (what turned out to be) a fairly underwhelming boat trip round the lake;![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rapperaddict and I instead pottered gently about admiring the Rathaus, the churches, the carvings, and the unexpected statues of people lolling on seals.
Due to An Hilarious Mix-up with tickets (which I and my barely adequate German were dispatched to resolve) and the inability to leave a bar quickly in Germany[*] many of our party missed the train back to Lüneburg. So we waited an hour, caught the next, and steamed straight up to the fabulous Gasthausbrauerei Nolte for dinner. I like breweries. I like food. I especially like nice breweries with interesting menus and - it turns out - their own smokehouses. I had a whole smoked trout and it was fabulous. I came away full of food and clutching a bottle of malt schnapps.
Saturday and Sunday were basically whirlwinds of dancing, drinking, eating, dancing more and drinking more. We did some dancing in the streets, having jumped through a large number of permit-acquisition hoops in advance, including sending scans of the passports of all dancers to the local council. Dancing in the streets is always fun in Europe. Unlike the UK, as soon as you start doing a thing passersby think "oooh, thing!" and form a large and appreciative audience. It's not unusual to find people dropping in five or ten Euro notes when you pass the hat round, which never ceases to amaze me.
Exciting beer was everywhere, though most excitingly when we walked (all 22 of us) into a brewpub and discovered that you could order a barrel. A whole one[**].
So we did.
On Saturday evening we also boarded the Hamburg beer bike, and cycled ourselves (slowly) around. The beer bike is a 16 person vehicle, powered by ten sets of pedals, with an on-board beer barrel. It has a 12V battery to power its lights and CD player (bring your own CDs), and comes with a driver to pilot you around the city. So we trundled round, beer in hand, listening to Whistling Dave Morris and Kraftwerk (Tour de France, natch). And it was dark, and cold, and kind of fun. And when we disembarked, the driver asked us what was in those bags... and so North British danced Elgin (a five-man longsword dance) in a multistorey car park to demonstrate...
On Monday, people began to go their separate ways, and Mabel did some pleasant touristing around Lüneburg. Although we went up the water tower (no longer used, and now a tourist attraction; nice view), mostly we just pottered around. The snow had finally stopped and, though it was cold, the sun was out and it was lovely weather for looking at interesting buildings and tiny little streets and quirky shops. It's a good town for pottering. Then it was a smooth transit through an almost-deserted Hamburg airport, and home again.
So, I've overhauled my rusty German a bit, seen some lovely scenery, eaten some fabulous food, drunk a lot of beer, and learned that when someone who's supposed to be guiding you home says "Can anyone see the Plough?" it doesn't necessarily mean you really are lost.
If you'd like to see Mabel dancing in a great German brewpub in Lüneburg then you can, thanks to Dr John and his video camera. The film is shot from above, and the audio's a bit flaky (thanks to someone clapping along loudly near the mic, I think) - we were complimented on the amazing shininess of our swords :)
[*] In the UK: order drink, pay for drink, leave at leisure. In Germany: order drink, drink drink, attempt to order bill, wait for bill, pay, leave in a hurry. It's not a bad system, it's just unfamiliar and took us by surprise a few times.
[**] OK, not a whole one by UK standards. It was a ten litre barrel. For €65, when buying a half-litre was €4.20.
Having arrived the recommended two hours before flying, we queued for two and a quarter. Fortunately, it seems the plane was queueing somewhere as well.
My dance team, Mabel Gubbins, was heading away to Hamburg. North British Sword, a very tweedy gentlemen's team, had invited us to join them on their Easter jolly. All arriving on different flights, we all piled into a pre-determined bar opposite Hamburg's central railway station before going for a little stroll around. Everyone else hopped on (what turned out to be) a fairly underwhelming boat trip round the lake;
rapperaddict and I instead pottered gently about admiring the Rathaus, the churches, the carvings, and the unexpected statues of people lolling on seals. Due to An Hilarious Mix-up with tickets (which I and my barely adequate German were dispatched to resolve) and the inability to leave a bar quickly in Germany[*] many of our party missed the train back to Lüneburg. So we waited an hour, caught the next, and steamed straight up to the fabulous Gasthausbrauerei Nolte for dinner. I like breweries. I like food. I especially like nice breweries with interesting menus and - it turns out - their own smokehouses. I had a whole smoked trout and it was fabulous. I came away full of food and clutching a bottle of malt schnapps.
Saturday and Sunday were basically whirlwinds of dancing, drinking, eating, dancing more and drinking more. We did some dancing in the streets, having jumped through a large number of permit-acquisition hoops in advance, including sending scans of the passports of all dancers to the local council. Dancing in the streets is always fun in Europe. Unlike the UK, as soon as you start doing a thing passersby think "oooh, thing!" and form a large and appreciative audience. It's not unusual to find people dropping in five or ten Euro notes when you pass the hat round, which never ceases to amaze me.
Exciting beer was everywhere, though most excitingly when we walked (all 22 of us) into a brewpub and discovered that you could order a barrel. A whole one[**].
So we did.
On Saturday evening we also boarded the Hamburg beer bike, and cycled ourselves (slowly) around. The beer bike is a 16 person vehicle, powered by ten sets of pedals, with an on-board beer barrel. It has a 12V battery to power its lights and CD player (bring your own CDs), and comes with a driver to pilot you around the city. So we trundled round, beer in hand, listening to Whistling Dave Morris and Kraftwerk (Tour de France, natch). And it was dark, and cold, and kind of fun. And when we disembarked, the driver asked us what was in those bags... and so North British danced Elgin (a five-man longsword dance) in a multistorey car park to demonstrate...
On Monday, people began to go their separate ways, and Mabel did some pleasant touristing around Lüneburg. Although we went up the water tower (no longer used, and now a tourist attraction; nice view), mostly we just pottered around. The snow had finally stopped and, though it was cold, the sun was out and it was lovely weather for looking at interesting buildings and tiny little streets and quirky shops. It's a good town for pottering. Then it was a smooth transit through an almost-deserted Hamburg airport, and home again.
So, I've overhauled my rusty German a bit, seen some lovely scenery, eaten some fabulous food, drunk a lot of beer, and learned that when someone who's supposed to be guiding you home says "Can anyone see the Plough?" it doesn't necessarily mean you really are lost.
If you'd like to see Mabel dancing in a great German brewpub in Lüneburg then you can, thanks to Dr John and his video camera. The film is shot from above, and the audio's a bit flaky (thanks to someone clapping along loudly near the mic, I think) - we were complimented on the amazing shininess of our swords :)
[*] In the UK: order drink, pay for drink, leave at leisure. In Germany: order drink, drink drink, attempt to order bill, wait for bill, pay, leave in a hurry. It's not a bad system, it's just unfamiliar and took us by surprise a few times.
[**] OK, not a whole one by UK standards. It was a ten litre barrel. For €65, when buying a half-litre was €4.20.
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Date: 2013-04-08 12:19 pm (UTC)To get there stand by Block brau facing the water and turn left and walk for about 10 mins.