Nancy and Lauren Narrowly Avoid Being Strippers

So after a disappointing venture into Bavarian dancing with Nina (it was quite boring, but the wait staff was really funny and talked to me when I got bored out of my wits), Lauren (also from Stanford) and I decided go explore… With absolutely no destination in mind, we meandered around Munich (getting ice cream TWICE- once at the greatest place EVER! with Banana caramel ice cream) and then ended up accidentally in Suburbia and despaired of finding ANYTHING…

And then we heard the music! Being crazy adventurers, we followed it to a building under construction, where we saw a small sign saying "richtfest 5 etage." We had no idea what that meant, but we saw the word FEST so of COURSE we, without a second thought, walk to the elevator. When we get off we immediately saw two older gentlemen, who seemed very excited to see us…and my first thought was "OMG, this is a Bavarian bachelor party and they think we're the strippers they ordered." So I very adamantly asked for an explanation (politely- we WERE crashing, of course) of what it was before we got far from the elevator. It turns out, when the roof is first built (mind you the building is FAR from finished), they have a party! Because, as they explained, Bavarians celebrate EVERYTHING!!! They all seemed excited to learn about us, so we sat down at a table on the unfinished, open air top floor of this building, and mingled with the 30 or so people there- architects, electricians, builders, and their families. We had a GREAT time talking (and joking! I TOTALLY joked in German!) It was almost entirely an older crowd who made especially sure we got plenty of dessert and drinks. They treated us like long-lost daughters, with everyone running over to meet us, saying "OH! You two are the nice californian girls who heard the music!" Haha, ALL sweethearts! There was also a dancefloor upstairs with great music (world, hip hop, latin, german, EVERYTHING good).

We made friends with all the "big guys" in the company, and soon the main boss pointed out two younger guys (mid 20's maybe) and said apologetically, "this is all we have to offer you" It took me a minute to realize that he was so concerned about us enjoying the party we had crashed that he had deemed it necessary to supply us with men as well as food and drinks....and, hahaha, ALL?!?! They were two carpenters who worked on the house…and I swear to god, the boss walked over and talked to them for a minute, and then they kind of looked at each other, shrugged, and took their shirts off! (and SHIT. Just……shit).

So we stayed at this party the whole night (the nicest people in the WORLD! I love Bavarians.) And the whole time they were trying to sell these carpenters on us ("what's your sign? Libra? Oh good- Julius- you two are perfect!" "they're the nicest guys. The nicest" "how are those two nice young men working out for you two?") Even more interesting, we were terribly confused because we had this confusing Danglish interaction which left us thinking that they were a gay couple- which I found out later not to be true ;) (They had been trying to communicate to us that they were nice guys who weren't looking to do anything sleazy, but all that came out mutually comprehensible was that they were "not looking for women", which Lauren and I misunderstood...hahaha, oh how language barriers make everything interesting...)

So on what started as a boring to disappointing Thursday night, we ended up dancing, drinking, and talking the night away (AND made a conga line go through the whole house- which gave me an excuse to put my hands on some extraordinary upper body ;) ), and promised to return for the next party, which, in Bavaria, shouldn't be too far off...