It's not weird, it's different

In the wise words of Claire, hold onto your lederhosen ladies and gentlemen, and advance apologies for the long-ness that is about to occur.

I don't know many people are reading this that took German with me in high school, or had Frau Stecher as a German teacher? Probably none (except you Amy), but for those of you who never met/had Frau, her motto was always "It's not weird, it's different." It's a good motto, and it got applied to any and every question we ever had about why Germany was so weird (or rather, why Germany isn't weird because it's just different.) Language? Culture? People/places/German TV? It's not weird, it's different.

Coming here, I've really tried to keep that motto alive, because it's useful and it puts things in perspective. Which is why, during the last three days of my life I spent following German riding students around, I latched onto it like a lifejacket and repeated it every two and a half seconds. You'll see why:

Okay, so horseshow! Student horseshows in Germany are pretty much the complete opposite of what they are in the US (and, no offense IHSA, but I think they're better in some ways, and this isn't american-inferiority complex talking here). Student horseshows in Germany are, among other things, a giant excuse to party. Everybody knows and loves everybody else from all the other teams, but the only time they see each other is at horseshows, which mean these events come out something like family reunion meets dance parties on speed and no sleep, and I mean this in the best way possible. They're also pretty evenly split male/female, which is (I must admit) a nice change.

Friday night is a giant themed costume party. The theme for this one was "Wetten, dass..." which is a German TV show I've never seen, but I still got thrown into a costume and made to go anyway. Being the only foreigner and with not-so-great German was (more than) a little overwhelming and intimidating, but I met lots of people which was cool, except when they asked me what my costume was, and I couldn't tell them. Also, we came back at 5.30 in the morning, got three hours of sleep on the floor of an elementary school gymnasium, and had to get up for Saturday.

Saturday was dressage day, and apparently a continuation of the costume party the night before, as I discovered when I had a minor heart attack over the dressage team that went in with googles and those little swimmie-armband floation devices on over their riding clothes, which (apparently) is perfect okay. But it's not weird, it's different. It was also really fun, because teams (while not really taking competition to heart in the ring), really tried to out-yell each other, as in every five minutes one team would go "oooooooOOOOOOHHHH...KONSTANZ!" or whatever their team name was. Girls would also occasionally yell "HANDSOME MAN ON HORSE!" whenever guys went into the ring, and vice versa. Lots of bursting out into song and dance a la musical all day, lots of yelling, and lots of crazy German dance music in the background. Like at one point a really tall kid from another team drew a pony to compete on, and when he entered the ring the DJ (because there was one) started playing a silly song "Du bist gerade auf dein Pony...", all about how "you're riding a pony, you look ridiculous, your feet are touching the ground," etc etc and everyone started singing it, and the poor kid was laughing so hard he almost didn't finish his dressage test.

Saturday night was another party, and I spent a solid two hours being taught a German drinking game involving bouncing a quarter off a table and into a mug (and it' dumb, p.s.). I also learned The Dance that everyone does--apparently it's a very old German dance that only the riding students have kept alive, and it involves lots of twirling and crazy fun stuff, and I promise I'll teach it to all of you because it's awesome, but you need a guy (who's volunteering?) and you have to do it to fast music. And speaking of music, just for the record, the German idea of what music is cool ceased progressing somewhere in the mid-80's, so if you've never heard La Bamba remixed to an electro beat before, I would recommend it, because it's not weird, it's different. I also taught the German kids the Cotton-Eye Joe, because while the song is popular, the dance just never made it over.

Also, if anyone tells you Germans have magical european livers of steel, that's a lie, because they don't. The only difference is it takes them four or five straight hours of drinking to only get half as drunk as americans, but they've got lots of fun little things to help pass the time. I learned all about klopfers or knockers, which are like these really mild shot-type things in a little bottle. They're called knockers because you have to get a group of friends, hold your little bottle upside down, bang it on the table for like 20 seconds screaming, rip the cap off, put the neck of the bottle between your teeth, and then drink. Klopfers got done every so often throughout the night (and before the night starts), as I found out about an hour before we left for the party. We had come back early to take naps, and when I woke up I heard "Tina needs one too!" I sat up to see what it was that I needed, and got hit in the chest with a bottle of alcohol, which in retrospect, is a situation that could really only occur to me in Germany. But! As Frau Stecher says, it's not weird, it's different.

Sunday was jumping day, which was pretty fun. But in Germany, tough horse draw is tough horse draw, and when the same horse throws off it's first three riders, good luck to rider number four, because that's what happened, and the German students did not understand why I did not understand. Casualty Number 2 landed on his knees, and I can only imagine how much that must have hurt! Also at the end of the every day, the top boy rider and the top girl rider have to compete against each other for the winner-of-the-day title, and at the end of it they have to grab each other, fall down, roll around on the ground, and pretend like they're making out. Which is not weird, it's just different. It's a tradition to represent no hard feelings or what not, or at least that's how it got explained to me? Then they have the awards ceremony, no ribbons, only prizes, and the Survivor's Cup for the team that stays the longest at the parties (which was us) gets given out, the prize for which was a box of klopfers.

Bear with me a little longer, but I just really need to get this out there:

At one point on Sunday during the show, somebody busted out a number of bright pink cut-out rubber breasts that a bunch of people hung around their necks and nonchalantly walked around in for the day. Then somebody thought it would be a good idea to hang one on a horse and go jump a course in it. With that in mind, I'd like to slightly edit the motto, because 90 percent of the time, it's different, but the other 10 percent of the time, it's horses jumping fences while wearing female genitalia, and no matter how much I carve that one up, that's just weird. And the fact that I was as completely unbothered as everyone else should be considered a sign and a cry for help.

Sorry for the really rambling really long post, but I know like 89 million people are going to be asking me what German student horseshows are like, so there. That's what they're like, complete with bizarre traditions, dances, and sex-shop merchandise. Riding today, will let you know how that goes, but right now, I'm going to sleep, I've spent the last two nights on a gym floor. Adios amigos!