German WE (weekend)

The German club meeting was packed out with people today. We had a record-breaking no. of 13 at the table once the late birds had all filtered in. There were some great conversations that took place and good humor all around. I very much enjoyed myself and I would hope that the others did as well. 

The mix of German speakers in the group today was a bit more varied than usual: 

two from India
four from Germany (one native dialect speaker who can speak the standard when pressed)
one from Italy
one from Ireland
one from Israel
one from Indonesia/Holland
three from California (one of whom had German-Jewish parents)

I like a group that includes new visitors as it's always interesting to learn why folk were keen on learning German to begin with. Alternatively, it's equally interesting to learn what drew Germans to California. Silicon Valley seems to be the reason for many, but one German, who is a German club regular, moved here for love.

Last night, I attended a Glühwein party put on by a friend of a friend. Glühwein, for those of you who do not know, is a hot, spiced wine consumed in German-speaking countries. 

Food grade lye makes a pretzel a pretzel!

I brought pretzels to the Glühwein fest.

I suppose not surprisingly, about half of the Glühwein party attendees were German. I spoke a bit with them auf Deutsch, but, mostly, we spoke in English about the cultural and linguistic differences found in German-speaking lands and sort of took the piss out of Swiss Germans (as you do when none are present). 

One of the men at the party turned out to be an old friend of a dear friend of mine. They, he and my friend, were both in bands that gigged together in the local music scene some thirty years ago. In fact, I had probably met this dude more than once back in the early 90s at various music shows. Darned if I have any memory of it now, however.