This evening was "The 253rd Burns Night"-- "ein Schottischer Abend an der Uni Mainz". Yep, I'd never heard of this either. Luckily, Wikipedia has an article about "Burns Supper" which is apparently also sometimes referred to as, you guessed it, Burns Night! It is a celebration of the life of poetry of Robert Burns and traditionally is celebrated around his birthday, which was January 25th. Wikipedia notes that you can celebrate the poet really whenever you please, however. You eat haggis, drink whisky, and make general merriment. Wikipedia even said that the evening "occasionally ends with dancing when ladies are present". There were ladies present tonight, and I will be the first to say, whew! was there ever a lot of dancing. Take all of this info with a grain of salt because 1) I got it from the Wiki, and 2) I didn't read past the introduction paragraphs. However, that summary is pretty spot on with what I saw tonight.
I've never before celebrated anything Scottish using another language (the minister from my childhood is Scottish and wore a kilt every Sunday and to everything noteworthy, so let's agree that I've my fair share of celebrating the Scottish way). I was to begin by helping with the Garderobe-- coat check, or as the signs for the Garderobe also said-- "Cloack Room". Bless the dear heart of the person who made these signs, but it was killing me. And then, I couldn't think of the right way to spell that! I knew "Cloack" was wrong, but with my brain switched into German-mode, I couldn't correctly spell Cloak in my head! "Clock? No. Cloh.... Noooo... Cl. um. erg." Probably took me 10 minutes to remember "C-L-O-A-K". German, you are scrambling my brains!
I was also asked to please help set up the beamer. Uh huh! We had a beamer there! But what does a beamer have to do with Scotland? In Germany, where beamers come from, "beamer" does not mean BMW automobile. Nope, here it means projector! You know, you beam the light onto the wall! I'd have preferred to be in charge of a beamer as we Americans understand it, but I got the projector.
There was much haggis. Much haggis. What? I should reference Wikipedia for this, too? Ok. According to Wiki, haggis is a sheep's "pluck"-- heart, liver, and lungs. It is minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, and mixed with stock. Tradionally it's cooked in the animal's stomach as casing, but you really have no need to be grossed out anymore, because normally now it's cooked in just normal casing. Just your run-of-the-mill bodily organs Mischung. I have to say though, it doesn't taste bad. So when you are offered haggis at some point in your life, forget what you have read here about the contents, and just go for it. You probably maybe might be glad you did.
Oh gosh, and then there was whisky. I think they had 25 different kinds of Scotch, the oldest having aged 18 years. That's the only one I tried (c'mon... I was working!), but there was certainly plenty of whisky enjoyed by the evening's guests. And then came the dancing! Oooo we learned Scottish dances for groups of 6, groups of 2, groups of 50, one big group... and there is a lot of twirling and "swinging your partner", aber ich weiß nicht was "swing your partner" eigentlich auf deutsch heißt. I marched around to "eins-zwo-drei-vier-fünf-sechs-sieben-acht" like a really happy, kind of giggly soldier-dancer. Hilarious. And super fun. And we'd all learn the dance and then before we were allowed to start dancing we'd all have to be correctly and logically lined up because after all, Ordnung muss sein.
I was sure glad I didn't drink whisky and then spin around as many times as I did on that dance floor, or I probably would have tossed up some haggis, to be quite frank. Also, it started snowing! This is the second snowfall Mainz has had this year, and while it wasn't much, it was the good kind with big, fat, fluffy flakes that are ripe for snowman-construction. And that's just what happened on my walk home. 2 very miniature snowmen (one was a snowlady) were constructed and properly named (Roberto and Sofia), and then I mourned the fact that my German cell phone is camera-less. They were picture worthy. I hope they have a nice, snowy night together on the bench where they live.
And now I'm home. Soaking wet ballet flats, tights, socks, and pant-hems. But really loving my Scottish night in Germany.
Plus, I keep starting out the word "Scottish" by spelling it the German way-- "Schot...") and then I have to stop and correct myself. I'm telling you, I have scramble brain from German.
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