Pangea Party II

We recently hosted our second international potluck dinner party at our place.  Like last time, we invited our work friends over and asked everyone to bring a dish/drink from their home country.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find the cheap American beer I was looking for so we dusted out our pie pans and made a couple of delicious American apple pies.   This year’s party helped us realize just how long we have been here, since about half of our guests from last year have finished their internships/fellowships and moved away.  But apparently we meet new people quickly because we had a full house of 26 (including the dogs).  This year we had 11 countries represented:  Germany (6), America (4, including us), Italy (3), Spain (3), Greece (2), France (1), Indonesia (1), Russia (1), Netherlands (1), Brazil (1), and Columbia (1). Look at us starting to blend in with the German crowd! 

Now for some of the highlights from the night (thanks Julie for drinking responsibly to remember all of this!):

• Of course, one of the best parts of the night is all of the cool food and drinks people bring.  We had some very unique, homemade, culturally accurate dishes.  But with the large crowd and us being busy hosting, we were not able to taste everything or even make an exact list of everything there.  However, we can remember that the Columbian liquor, Spanish sangria, and Brazilian caipirinhas kept the party going strong.

• One addition to the party this year was that one of guests brought his guitar – and our neighbor upstairs grabbed his as well.  Thanks to those guitars, for a good part of the night we had live entertainment.  Those who can sing (not us) spent the night belting out classic American hits (like Cranberry’s Zombie).

• The dogs didn’t hesitate to join in on the party either - they were so good (as usual), just checking everyone out and keeping the floors clean.  At one point one of our guests became enthralled with Sadie and apparently Sadie felt the same.  We looked over as Sadie was laying passed out in a doggie, belly rub trance for about half an hour.  It was like a real dog whisperer moment.  Later she asked if she could take our dog home, but Julie wasn’t having it!  Rita, perhaps….but no way Sadie.  Kidding!

• Later in the night Julie decided to pop some American Orville Redenbacher popcorn.  It’s important to realize that popcorn is usually always sweet (versus salty) in Germany.   Now imagine taking a sip of a soda and it tasting like salt instead of sugar…pretty gross right?!  Well this was pretty much the reaction of one of our German friends when he ate the popcorn expecting it to be sweet.  He really did give a very dramatic disgusted face to go with it, very similar to those videos of babies eating lemons for the first time.  Unfortunately I missed it, but Julie says it was epic.

• If you’ve ever been to a bakery in Europe then you will understand this one.  In addition to the pies, we had also baked some chocolate chip cookies.   Pretty much everyone was blown away and praising them like they were some very exotic dessert (except the other fellow Americans of course).  At least a few people asked us “how do you make the cookies so chewy!?”,  to which we just responded “how do you make cookies here so hard and undesirable!?”.   Ok, we left out the undesirable part, but in our opinion, don’t come to Germany looking for good cookies.

• Our guest from Russia was very intrigued by the various wedding Save the Date cards, which we had pinned on our chalkboard.  After explaining this newer American tradition to him, he announced he wants to send Save the Date cards with a photo of him and his bike the next time he hosts a party…we’re not sure he fully grasped the concept.

• As we are not big drinkers, most of the liquor we set out for the party was either the remains of last year’s party or something we received as a gift.  My co-worker from Greece was quite impressed with my selection of ouzo, claiming it is really the best one.  I had to remind her that this bottle was the one she gifted me a year ago.  She couldn’t believe we had not finished it off.  Like I said, we really aren’t big drinkers. 

Let’s hope enough of these folks stick around another year so we can continue our new yearly tradition.  Otherwise, we better get out and meet some new people in 2014!