Stammtisch

Last week, Sophia and I had the idea to host a German dinner. It was mostly intended as a way of expressing a bit of the gratitude we feel for some of the folks that we’ve met here (like the man whose name you’ve read in almost every single post on my blog, including this one) and to have a nice evening with a couple of our new-found friends. So the two of us and Sam (he insisted on helping us) spent a good deal of Saturday afternoon in my kitchen preparing the food. In practice, that meant peeling and cooking dozens of potatoes and sweet potatoes because we wanted to cook a sweet potato and ginger soup along with potato salad and potato pancakes. Although we called it German dinner (or, alternatively, Stammtisch) we had no intention of necessarily preparing the most typical German food, but instead just something we like to eat. And while Sophia was the brains, the chief executive and manager of our culinary crew, Sam and I were the executive organs. The hardworking hands, relegated to the menial labors of peeling and grating the tubers. We had a good time racing each other at the graters while constantly afraid of the possibility of grating our own fingers as the potatoes shrunk away, but in the end we might have had too much fun because we weren’t quite on schedule. 

     So, while the first guests came in after 7 p.m. dinner was only almost ready. But they had crackers with cheese. And beer. Luckily, the other Leipzig students also brought some food, so we did not solely depend on a potato based meal. Then everyone was eating, and no one was complaining. Everyone said they liked it, and I think we’d done an okay job, too. I'd also put some effort into creating a playlist with some good German music, including a whole lotta great songs by ClickClickDecker, Herrenmagazin,  Tomte, Eins Zwo,  and, of course, MC Fitti's 30 Grad. Unfortunately, most people preferred listening to Geeg's record collection (Stones, Dylan, Fleetwood Mac, etc.) in the living room. Can't blame 'em, it's good music! Anyway, after dinner, we hung out a bit more, some of us shotgunning beers on the porch (I know, it’s really bad. Don’t do it!), drinking some self-made hot nuts (Take that, Tony’s!—Just kiddin’, love you!) or-the alternative preferred by some others-just fencing intellectually over the federal government’s success/failure in social politics. Then, because Natalie knew another place for us to go, we left the house to crash another living room where we might have stayed for about half an hour or so before we hit the bars. A couple of beers later, after the dreadful hour of 2 a.m., the few of us who were still up and about said hi at Michael’s and Justin’s place where we watched some Sochi snowboarding, and then went on home, back into our house upon the mound. Maybe the best thing after all is, a lot of the food is still left!