New Year's Day is a long, slow occasion when you aren't at home and you've nothing to do. All shops are shut, everyone is probably with their families or sleeping off a night in a club dancing to music they haven't heard since 2012. There are only so many things to do, like learning how to play whist, or going to the only supermarket that is open and making a big pot of pasta salad (in a European style of course, very different from how I make it, but then thats Europeans for you! They have that weird love of mayonnaise too).
The Bavarians are all desperately hungover and, when they do appear intermittently, interrupt our video calls back home. Fortunately their bravado is balanced out when my father asks one of them 'Do you put your towels on the sun loungers at the pool?'. The Bavarian is stunned into silence, and returns to his litre bottle of Stella.
After lunch we make a start on the dishes. A glass falls to the tiled floor and explodes. Georg's foot is suddenly in a pool of blood, a small shard having caught his ankle. Nurse Sarah is quickly on the scene, the foot is elevated, cleaned, and gauze applied. All Georg has to do is keep his foot up to stop the blood running to his foot. Fat chance.
The girl who owns the hostel tries her best to get an ambulance, but its the siesta on New Years Day and the doctors are all asleep. I am fairly sure he needs stitches. Our temporary patch-up won't last, and doesn't, and once again we are mopping blood off the tiles. At least it puts in some time. Eventually we get some paramedics out, who are unamused by the Bavarian's antics but are polite and clean the wound. Naturally it is tiny when washed down with saline, and easily bandaged up. Big bottles of Brahma are an effective anaesthetic.
When the dust settles and the Bavarians all retire, we settle down to learn how to play cards. Sarah has difficulties with the different suits. Tim (our Frenchman in Dublin) reveals his love of Bridge. I do my best to persuade him to start playing competitively.
Tim, Sarah and Lees.
Around 8pm Sonya announces she is going to book a table at a rather nice Pizza restaurant. A dozen of us sign up. At 9.30pm we arrive at a rather suave establishment.
When the Bavarians first spotted us they pointed at me, Norn Iron football shirt, green shorts, on a green chair, drinking black beer (Quilmes Stout) and said "He is from Ireland!" It was true. In the restaurant we found a wall we could hide against. Everyone was amused.
Sarah and I, Japanese style.
Sonya, Sebastian, Jonas, Me, Georg and Laura.
Where is Daniel? After a bottle of delicious Malbec, who knows? We were very amusingly reminded by our group's resident Argentinian that 'Just one or two beers here, ok?', then the waiter was delighted when we selected a local wine from the menu. As Irish travellers (ummmm....) we carry the weight of the world's expectations of our island on our shoulders. Fortunately for our livers it is impossible to get drunk down here. It's all lager, which is refreshing rather than intoxicating, and now we are in the Southern Cone we can enjoy some wine (which is impossible in the humid heat of the middle of the continent).
George and his bloodied foot. It was his birthday the following day.
What a fine day, full of all the adventures and drama we wanted from this trip. We have made good friends too; Sarah has been invited by Sonya and Laura to visit their village, south of Munich and barely north of the Alps, where she can sing The Sound Of Music all day long. I, by contrast, am invited down to enjoy Octoberfest with these boys in their very traditional town, with proper lederhosen and music. Somehow it is 5am and we are discussing the greatest guitar solos ever.
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