Dinner and a wedding

Yesterday I went out with 5 of my teammates to a Feuerheurigen. This is a little weekend festival/fundraiser for the villages local firefighters. There is a big tent with a live band (usually traditional polka music), a few bars, lots of tables and benches and tons of people of all ages. This specific weekend event is cool because I went to the same one last year. I went to this one with a few teammates last year on the first weekend I was here. The same band was playing too! It is cool because they play a song in german, than a song in english. I am also getting to know the choruses of the popular german songs so it was fun. Kathrin and I only stayed for about an hour and a half, mostly to eat dinner after practice. The other stayed many more hours. I ate a Schnitzelsemmel mit Pommes und ein Radler (Thin and breaded veal or pork with fries and a beer with lemonade drink).

Today, I went to the wedding of my head coach Sabine. It was a nice traditional ceremony from this specific part of Austria. My teammates and I went into the church to sit and wait for the ceremony to start. The other 200 or so guests were led from a nearby gasthof (hotel) by a man playing an accordion. The groom was in front of the crowd of people and the bride at the end. It was cool when they all walked in, but it took a long time for the ceremony to start. The ceremony was nice and traditional. There was a lot of songs, all in german, with the words printed in the program. With each song we had to stand up for its entirety and then there was a prayer or recitation of the Bible after it.

A few minutes before the end of the ceremony the Pee Wees went and changed into our uniforms, socks and cleats/turfs. We each had a bat and a flower and lined up like a tunnel for the bride and groom to walk through once leaving the ceremony to the agape. Little did I know, we would be holding up the bats for all 200 people exiting the church. Total arm workout. The agape is where wine and bread are served and everyone lines up to give their congratulations to the married couple. Of course, this stage lasted a while because there were so many guests. In addition, we were still in our uniforms with our bats waiting to take a picture with Sabine.


Once we got a picture with her, we rushed inside to change to our nice outfits and then we took a few pictures of the girls that were there. Then me and three other girls from the team went home. We were the four Pee Wees that were not invited to the reception, but I was the only one that is actually over 19 years old. It was kind of lame going home early when the rest of my friends were getting ready to drive to a big party for my coach. It was an incomplete feeling...probably since I only got to say Congratulations to my coach and that's it and there was no other close interaction with her at all. It was half a wedding that I went to and while it was going on it was like the glass was half full, but when it was over it felt half empty.