June 13-14, 2014 Hamburg, Germany

We left Dülmen around noon for our 4-1/2 hour drive to Hamburg. Road construction, heavy traffic, and our navigation system trying to reroute us made the trip into a 6 hour adventure! Oh well, we arrived at our hotel, got checked in, and five minutes later, our telephone was ringing. Tom, our first exchange student, was there, on his way to our room. We were so excited! His wedding was scheduled for June 14 – the event that precipitated this entire trip! We went with him to meet up with Anna and have dinner before the festivities of Saturday. It was really fun spending time together.

Saturday proved to be a busy day. We were off to St. Gertrud Kirche about noon for the 1 pm ceremony. It was beautiful, even though we don’t speak German, we could follow along. The minister did ask everyone to NOT take pictures during the ceremony, so we got one of the church before the wedding started.

After the service we all walked about a mile to a hotel for a roof-top reception of champagne and cake. That ended around 4 pm and we went back to the hotel to change into our cocktail clothes for the dinner/dance reception at 6 pm.

We had a wonderful time! We sat with another student, Alex, and his wife, Marleen. Alex was in the US the same year as Tom, and we got to know him and considered him to be one of our “boys”, as well!

Dinner, drinks, and a game were part of the reception. The guests were all given a list of things from “you are a parent, you are wearing black shoes, you are wearing a necktie”, etc. When the emcee announced the item number on the list, you stood up if it pertained to you. Tom and Anna then had to guess what everyone had in common. It was really fun and different than anything we have seen in U.S. weddings. The dancing didn’t begin until almost 11 pm, and the last course of the meal was served after midnight!

We reluctantly said our goodbyes and best wishes to the happy couple after midnight before heading back to our hotel.