Bavarian Lunch and Opera

This afternoon was the Bavarian Luncheon that Doro and the Wild Welshman had been planning for ages. I'd been feeling a lot of guilt about it, as I had originally thought that I wouldn't be able to go, as my cousin was due to return from Paris on Friday, and so I thought I would be entertaining her. Yet Doro and the Wild Welshman had asked me for help in filling the numbers, so I'd invited a lot of friends (who logically assumed I would be there as well), and had just been avoiding the fact that I wouldn't be attending. However my cousin e-mailed me on Thursday night to say that she wasn't coming home until Saturday night, so on Friday morning I called and managed to get the last ticket for the luncheon. So in the end it all worked out perfectly.

I work up a bit late (have been so exhausted these days!), but got showered, did my hair up in some "Heidi"-style braids, and dressed up with my best approximation of Bavarian dress, a long blue skirt, white blouse, and my grandmother's 1920's-style lily necklace. Ran out of my flat, but when I was about five minutes down the street, I suddenly wondered if I'd locked the deadbolt on my flat on auto-pilot. Since my cousin was arriving late in the evening, but I'd only given her keys for the latch lock, it was important that I didn't lock the deadbolt if she was going to be able to get in. So I ran back, found I had indeed accidentally locked the deadbolt, fixed that, and then made my way off to the club. (This minor detail becomes significant later...)

I arrived at the club, and was greeted by a familiar member of staff who said he hadn't recognised me for a second there with my head all done up. He handed me a beer stein and a bottle of real German beer, and then I went in to join everyone else in the room standing around for "cocktail hour", with all of our beer. I think I was too frantically trying to circulate, so I barely ended up talking to anyone I wanted to speak to. Chatted ever-so-briefly with Doro's boyfriend (first time I'd met him even though they've been dating for about six months), talked a bit to Seb (from our weekend in Berlin), and then saw a weirdly familiar-looking guy, who upon introduction turned out to be the Wild Welshman's brother. No wonder he looked familiar!

Then the oompah band marched through to call us in to lunch, where I found myself seated with a bunch of people I didn't know. I was rather concerned about this, and while I didn't have any truly stunning conversations, I did have some pleasant chats with people, so it all turned out okay.

The best part of the afternoon however, was the band. I had originally been suspicious when Doro and the Wild Welshman had wanted to get an oompah band playing for this event, but that turned out to have been a genius move. They got us standing up for "Bier Hier", toasting with "prost", and then doing silly seated drinking songs, with everyone swaying left-right-left-right-forwards-backwards-stand up-sit down" in their chairs. They did the Radesky March as we all thumped our beer steins on the table (I felt like I was back at German Honour Society dances), and an absolutely hysterical game where we sang "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" and had to stand up and sit down every time we sang a word beginning with the letter "B". Everyone was in stiches pretty quickly. We also did some singing along to "Do-Re-Mi" and a song the Happy Wanderer (which really cleverly you could substitute the words for any nursery rhyme, like Jack-and-Jill, and it still worked).

Lunch was quite good actually (schnitzel, wurst, and sauerkraut), and they gave us a new beer with every course. The girl next to me didn't like beer, and was drinking wine, so she gave me her beer. Which meant that by the time lunch was over, I'd had four beers. We then all retired upstairs to the bar, where gosh I was tipsy. At which point, somebody bought me another beer. Great!

I noticed pretty shortly after we'd gotten up there that I had somehow dropped my shawl, so I raced back downstairs to look for it. Once there, I found the Wild Welshman chatting to the banqueting coordinator, and they instantly asked me, "Are you looking for your shawl?" Ah yes, indeed, they'd already brought it to the front desk. Wonderful. To head back upstairs, the Wild Welshman gave me his arm to walk me up, which was very gentlemanly of him. The only trick was that I was wearing a floor-length skirt, and I had a beer stein in one hand, so when I took his arm with my other hand, I couldn't pick up my skirt to avoid tripping on it! I'm sure that women back in the 1800's knew how to deal with this, but as for me, I just kept tripping over the front of my skirt until we got to the top of the stairs. Luckily no accidents, so I wonder if he noticed. After all, it was such a sweet gesture, I didn't want to say no!

Back in the bar, I kept chatting with people, and just had a great time congratulating the Wild Welshman on an incredibly successful event. At around 5 PM (how on earth did two hours pass so quickly?) the Wild Welshman announced that he was rounding up the troops to head to a nearby pub for further drinking. Given that I had to meet my Irish Friend at the opera at 5:30, I really should have said no, but foolishly I agreed to go along. This was however after a humorous exchange with the Wild Welshman where I eventually swapped his beer for mine, giving him more to drink as I'd really had quite too much already. Gosh we were being flirty today, but we were also quite pissed...

I then walked with the Seb and a few others over to the second pub, where showing a serious lack of judgement, I let Seb buy me a half pint. I drank that while talking to Max and Seb, before suddenly realising that it was 5:25 and I said I'd meet my Irish Friend in the lobby of the opera house at 5:30. Oh dear.

So I said some quick good-byes (too much hugging of the Wild Welshman), and then raced down the street to the opera house, chewing gum the entire way in a desperate bid to cover up the alcohol fumes on my breath. Damn, why had I not kept better track of the time and of my alcohol consumption?

I arrived at the opera five minutes later, but quickly spotted my Irish Friend in the crowded lobby. If I'd been thinking, I would have taken a few seconds longer to run to the loo, but it should be obvious at this point that I was not doing a stellar job of thinking today.

So I greeted my Irish Friend, and then he asked me, "Do you like champagne?" Okay, two silly things about that question: 1) Who does NOT like champagne? Particularly Veuve Clicquot, which was what was on offer? 2) Did I really need MORE to drink at this point? So of course like an idiot, I said yes... My Irish Friend paid for the drinks (£26 for two glasses of champagne? Gasp!) and we enjoyed ourselves catching up and chatting before the bells rang telling us it was time to take our seats.

Upon finding our seats, I did gasp a bit nervously when I saw my Irish Friend take out the tickets (please tell me they were not actually £97 a piece, although I fear at this sold-out performance, as we were in the fourth row back, they may indeed have been), and then my Irish Friend insisted that I take the seat closer in towards the middle with the infinitesimal better view. I tried to protest, but the thing about dealing with my Irish Friend is that he is the consummate gentleman, with the most impeccable manners of any man I know. My chances of winning that argument were nil, so I just gave in.

My cousin asked me later why I don't date my Irish Friend, and I had to tell her that he's never made a move, and I'm not entirely sure what his sexual preference is. (He doesn't seem gay so much as...neutral). But I have to admit, his incredible manners and my slightly intoxicated state made me think I could easily be attracted to him. There's something about a well-mannered gentleman that is just so ATTRACTIVE. I swear, if any guy wants to seduce me, good manners seems to be the way to go.

I then spent the next two hours nearly sweating in agony as I cursed myself for not going to the loo before the performance started. I swear, my bladder was practically bursting by the intermission, and it took every ounce of self-control I had to not just race for the toilets the first chance I had. However, politely chatted to my Irish Friend who offered to fetch us ice cream (why on earth is that always the treat readily available at the opera?), and I made my way to the loo where in some bit of grace there was no line. I think I truly would have died otherwise.

While washing my hands, thankfully some woman pointed out to me that I had my skirt tucked into my pants, which would have been mortifying if I had left the loos like that! I was kind of embarrassed as it was, but grateful that somebody in this world was showing more sense than I was today.

I returned to my Irish Friend's side, enjoyed the ice cream (he gave me my choice, so of course I went for chocolate), and then we returned to our seats for the second half of the performance, which I enjoyed much more without a bursting bladder. I feel like I'd disappointed my Irish Friend a bit by not researching the opera in advance, but as I pointed out, sometimes it's fun to let the story unfold. But perhaps that is better with plays than with operas...

As we exited the opera, my Irish Friend got a call from some other mutual friends who were in town. So I picked an easy meeting spot, the base of Nelson's Column, and we walked there to wait for his friends. They joined us within about 20 minutes, and then I led them up to the Theatre District to find a place to grab a bite to eat, since we hadn't had any dinner before the opera. Found a "cheap and cheerful" chain cafe, ordered some pizza, and then we were joined by two more Irish friends. I was the only one at the table without a thick Irish accent, but as is great when dealing with Irish people, they were all super-friendly and made me feel quite at ease.

Just as I was finishing my chicken-and-pesto pizza (I had not realised how much I was starved!), I checked my phone, to see an e-mail from my cousin, saying that she'd gotten back to my flat, but couldn't get the keys to work. I was quite puzzled, as the Young Dutchman had been using those keys for weeks without any problems. How on earth could they not be working? So I told her to keep trying and if I didn't hear from her in 5 minutes, I would come home. Within minutes she e-mailed back saying it all wasn't working. Argh. I wish I could have just called her, but the phone was only working for e-mail, so I was forced to make my apologies and leave quite abruptly, which I felt was quite rude to my Irish friend who had been so lovely to me all evening. But if I were my cousin, I wouldn't want to remain locked out all evening waiting for me to come home...

So I raced to an ATM (I had no cash on me, after even leaving money for the bill in pound coins), got out money and then flagged a cab. It was a stupidly expensive trip, costing £23, and when I got home and raced up the stairs, I could see she was using the wrong key in the lock. So I JUST USED THE OTHER KEY and the door opened instantly. User error.

I was so pissed, as what kind of person, when they have two keys to open a lock, only tries one before concluding that the door won't open? And then sits there in the hallway for 40 minutes without trying the other key? Astonished doesn't even quite begin to convey my feeling that a person who is a senior-level VP at a company should know to try both keys before dragging me out of dinner and saddling me with a very expensive taxi trip. And so after going to so much effort to make sure the door was open for her, she managed to screw it up anyway... (On top of this, it also turns out that she'd borrowed two electrical converters from me, and then left them both in Paris. Isn't it sort of understood that when your borrow things, you're supposed to take care of them and return them?)

Anyway, let's try to be charitable here. She'd been running around Paris all day, had missed her train, and had also picked up a cold. So a bit of failure on the part of her brain to think clearly may have been allowable. I just wish it hadn't dragged me out of dinner early!

So I got her settled in the flat, where she then surprised me by wanting to stay up talking until 3 AM (only 2 AM thankfully due to British Summer Time ending), where I was just tripping over myself with exhaustion after the past few days. Got her packed off to the airport at 7 AM the next morning, where although I had been glad to see her, I was also somewhat happy to see her go before she cost me too much more in time and money!