Feiern: Bavarian-Czech Style

The card

Normally I’m a procrastinator. After the blog snafu, I was wishing I wasn’t so good at doing things at the last minute. So I’d like to think. I packed our bags Friday afternoon, two hours before departure and rushed out the door to buy a wedding card and snacks for our five hour drive.

The first store I visited was closed (early weekend, eh) and the second had these colorful cards with cheering people gathered around the bride and groom climbing a towering cake -too tribal, yikes! I picked something simple while wondering, what does Vermählung have to do with Hochzeit? I didn’t ask salesperson, she was already in a non-helpful mood. It turns out that Vermählung means Hochzeit or wedding, however it is just the formal way of announcing a marriage on paper. Germans, ugh.

Die Fahrt

So car packed, tomtom navigation system advised, and visas on hand -we were set for take off. It would take us 2.5 hours to get to the border. Five miles before the border control, we saw a line of semi trucks on the right-hand shoulder. What could this mean?

During the summer, trucks aren’t allowed to drive on Saturdays in Germany between the hours of 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. (this in addition to holidays and Sundays from 12 a.m. to 10 p.m.) This restriction isn’t implemented on Saturdays in the Czech Republic but there are restrictions on Friday evenings, so they wait and circumvent the verbot.

Once the Czech controller saw my face, he stopped us to check our visas. He was immediately uninterested after he saw I was a U.S. citizen and Alex, German. Schwoo. The highways are brand-spanking new between Germany and the Czech Republic, a sign of prosperity. The Czech Republic was made a new member of the EU in 2004 and they hope to switch their money in 2010. In the mean time it’s the Czech koruna; 50 Euro got us 400 koruna at the border. It’s hard to believe just 16 years ago the border between Germany and ‘Czechoslovakia’ was guarded with armed tanks and under Communism.

It was a good thing we had a navigation system, the highway signs are a bit different in the Czech Republic, nor could we read them. It’s just best to follow GPS directions:D

Hotel Na Statku
So we arrived at the hotel just outside of Prague around 10:30 p.m. We received one of the last rooms, which contained two twin beds at different locations in the room. Um. Not gonna happen. The bride was nervous, the groom chatty. We met the bride’s parents at the hotel restaurant and Alex and I each ordered a Pilsner Urquell, the world’s first golden beer, developed by a Bavarian brewer. Just when I wanted to brush up on my Bayrisch everyone went to bed while we finished our beer. Party poopers..as if there was some major event going to happen. At night’s end, we were buzzed and looking forward to springing into our rearranged twin mattresses.

Die Vermählung

So the wedding started at 12 noon, which meant early breakfast and getting out of the hotel by 10 a.m. We met the wedding party at the hair dressers. The bride, in a beautiful creme wedding dress, was even more nervous and asked for schnapps. Her dad came back with a shot of the strong stuff. When asked where the groom was, someone said that he was with the bottle. It’s okay if the groom see the bride in her dress before the ceremony.

The Church and Priest
The wedding was held in Vyšehrad near the Vltava River at the beautiful Basilika St. Peter and Paul. The interior is extremely ornate although rather small in comparison to the cathedrals in the major Bavarian cities. The Catholic service was officiated in German and Czech; the priest, I thought, did a fine job at both tasks. It was quite amusing to analyze the different ways he spoke depending on which language.

In German, the priest stroked his beard on one side and spoke slowly with many pauses between words, making it hard for me to follow. However, he seemed more relaxed with Czech, hunching over the podium and either waving his hand or stroking the opposite side of his beard. I later heard that the priest smelled very strongly of alcohol, but nonetheless he held a good service, encouraging the bride and groom not to worry so much about their lives together, everything will be alright.

Euphony and Lumberjack Duo
The highlight for me was the Choir, which sang Bach/ Gounod’s Ave Maria and Panis angelicus with perfect intonation. The music sent chills down my spine and I found I was swallowing tears. I’ve always been a softy for latin hymns. The ceremony lasted for about 1 hour with sitting, standing and kneeling on kneelers made of hard wood and angled so one has to hang on to the pew in front in order to keep from falling backwards.

After the ceremony, it started to rain while we all congratulated the newly wedded couple outside the church. It stopped enough to bring out the wedding log for “Das Holzstamm- Sägen“, a common wedding tradition in Germany. It is a symbol of how the married couple can overcome obstacles, under the Motto “Together we are strong”.

The Reception

Everyone was starving and thirsty. Alex and I rode with “die Zeugin“, which means witness or in American equivalent, the maid of honor, and her husband. We got lost in Prague, but a trucker was kind enough to show us how to get back on the highway. We arrived behind the married couple. Ups.

Die Rede and Festing Part I
After a toast with very sweet Seht, we sat down on long tables and heard “Die Rede des Brautvaters“, the father of the bride’s speech. He said that he has lived his whole life near the border and traveled the world but was never allowed to visit land behind the mountains (that being Czech) and now his family will be merged with another, who lived behind those very mountains. The speech was translated in Czech by a Czech German teacher. Pretty handy.

So eating commenced with the mid-day meal: tomato and mozzarella with drizzled olive oil, then wedding soup (noodles and meatballs made from liver), then a traditional Czech dish with meat slices, a creamy sauce made from beef stock, lemon, and berry sauce, and five large slices of something like dampfnoodle or softbread. Then there were snacks, wedding cake, beer in half litter portions. We were stuffed and we still had to look forward to a barbeque for dinner.

Gifts, Melody and Playtime
All the while, there were traditional songs sung between the bride’s family members and friends of the groom in their respective languages. The couple received gifts in between. Most were hand-made and in some creative way present money for the bridepair. Other gifts were related to an adventure the two would share. One gift, resembled a scarecrow, called a “Kindsbaum“, which is supposed to bring luck and a baby before their one year wedding anniversary. The tree is wrapped with money, baby clothes, and toys. If that doesn’t happen in a year, then the newly weds invite the gift-givers out to dinner and make a similar Kindsbaum, returning the wish to the original party.

Audience participation was also key to keep people active till the wee hours of the morning. One game resembled musical chairs only the players had to find an object among the guest and bring it back to the chairs. The one person left without a seat had to perform a task with or for the newlyweds. Since there were 12 players in the game, that meant that the new couple would meet one of the players for each month during their first year of marriage. Some people had to bake a cake for the couple. I lost the 3rd round, and my task is to take the couple out for a movie in November, sitting in between the pair holding the popcorn. Although we agreed to nachos and something sweet for the bride.

Dancing and more Feasting zum Schluss
What’s a Bavarian-Czech wedding without a three-piece Czech band. They were awesome, providing something for everyone for 8 hours with maybe a 30 minute break in total! Although, it was clear that no one pays attention to the words on english-language pop hits. Okay, just because they are slow songs does not mean that Annie Lenox’s Why and Toni Braxton’s Unbreak my Heart are songs to be played at a wedding, Bah.

In between the sets, more food was served in an other room: veggies, cheeses, alcohol soaked fruit, then red deer patties, grilled salmon and the best tasting Goulash I’ve tasted yet. At the end of the evening, Garlic soup was served. Boy, one could smell that soup for miles! It was so tasty. I’m still dreaming of the Goulash and Garlic soup.

We hit the sack by 3 a.m., what a day! I was so happy to be apart of it, it will be an experience I hope I don’t forget (especially with the help of this infinity post.) We didn’t stay to sightsee in Prague on Sunday. We want to dedicate a whole weekend for such an excursion and we wanted to plan for our vacation in Southern France starting in 3 days!