I didn’t keep a journal or diary for the week-long wedding celebrations for Michael and Elisabeth Mainelli…but that doesn’t matter because I went one better – I wrote a song lyric – which Janie and I performed at the wedding breakfast party – setting out the multi-day event in ballad form. The rest is detail, although I shall, below the lyrics, set out that detail such as it survives in my memory and pictures.
THE DAY WE WENT TO PFERSDORF
(A Bavarian drinking song to the tune of “The Day We Went To Bangor”)VERSE 1
Didn’t we have a lovely time
The day we got to Schweinfurt?
Straddles the Main,
With its beer and its wine,
In Franken, that’s North Bavaria;
We used our nous,
Went to the Brauhaus,
Where some friends of ours did meet us;
We ate and drank,
With some visiting Yanks,
So the beer went down.VERSE 2
Didn’t we have a lovely time
The day we went to Kreuzberg?
A beautiful vista,
Except for the mist and
The stuff that we call smog back home;
Up on the hill,
The monks can distil(l),
And they brew a beer like bitter;
Liz drank a few,
And young Michael did too,
So the beer went down.VERSE 3
Didn’t we have a lovely time
The day we did the Beer Fest?
We were relaxin’,
And eating schweinshaxen,
And drinking the cold weissbeer you know;
Can’t understand
Why some bloke in the band,
Got a pipe and played the toilet;
New folks showed up
And some old folks throwed up,
So the beer went down.
VERSE 4
Didn’t we have a lovely time
The day we went to Wurzburg?
A beautiful town,
Which we nearly burnt down,
But not that the guide went on about it;
Great elegance,
At the Residenz,
With its roof by Tiepolo;
The guide how he droned,
We sloped off to get stoned,
So the wine went down.VERSE 5
Didn’t we have a lovely time
The day we did the wine tour?
A beautiful day,
Strolled through vines on the way,
And lunch in one of the towns below;
There on the Main,
We tasted some wine,
For some local do tomorrow;
Tried about six,
Got confused by the mix,
So the wine went down.VERSE 6
Didn’t we have a lovely time
The day we came to Mainberg?
A beautiful schloss,
But we’re all at a loss,
Cos we don’t know why we’ve all been brought here;
Then someone said,
“Those two have got wed,
And we’ve gathered here to party”;
It’s their wedding day,
So sing hip hip hooray,
As the booze goes down.
Arrival In Schweinfurt, 14 May 1996
Janie and I were among the first of the wedding guests to arrive at the Hotel Ross in Schweinfurt. Many of the guests were going to stay at this hotel.
I recall the rather suspicious greeting we received – I’m not sure that parties of English and American visitors were the hotel’s favourite parties at that time – but Janie in particular managed to ingratiate herself with the management and staff quite quickly. By the end of the week, the hospitality was warm and friendly; certainly towards us, anyway.
Michael, Elisabeth and the Reuss family had arranged several days of activities for those who wanted to join them in the pre-nuptial celebrations as well as the wedding itself.
As the days went on, more and more people arrived and joined in those activities.
On that first night, though, I think we were “on our own”, by which I mean that the few of us who had arrived on the Tuesday were left to our own devices.
In truth I don’t remember who comprised that early arriving group. I think Keith Holland was around for most of the week, as were Andrew & Samantha Poole, Rupert Stubbs & Sophie. The “visiting Yanks” I refer to Verse 1 comprised several members of the extended Mainelli family, I think, plus some of Michael’s old friends – perhaps Emma & Betsy were early arrivals. I’m fairly sure the Schlossmans, the Ridges and the Lucas-Clements contingent were early arrivals too.
Anyway, I recall that we quickly settled on going to the Market Brauhaus, probably on the advice of the hotel management, where we ate and drank pretty well in the time-honoured provincial German fashion. Janie and I probably indulged our tatse for Schweinshaxn and this might well have been a beer evening rather than a wine one.
Pre-Nuptial Events 15 to 17 May 1996
We were coached around like tourists for the next few days, with eating and drinking being the main focus of the touring.
Verse 2 of the song pretty much sums up the day we visited the Kreutzburg Monastery. We couldn’t see much up in the mountains on that misty day, but we did enjoy the monastic beverages with a tasty lunch and got to know each other a fair bit better.
I think it was on the monastery tour that the lunch included some superb local white asparagus – quite exceptional it was. But the asparagus might have been on the wine tour. Or both the beer tour and the wine tour. Anyway, I remember that white asparagus fondly.
I have a feeling the beer fest (described in Verse 3) was the same day as the Kloster Kreutzburg tour, as I recall Janie and I wondering at the end of that first full day of celebrations whether we were going to be able to keep up with the other guests. **Spoiler Alert** – we WERE just about able to keep up with the other guests.
On the Thursday, the coach trip took us into Würzburg, a trip described in Verse 4 of the lyric. It was an especially interesting tour, the Würzburger Residenz being a quite spectacular piece of architecture with a fascinating history dating back to the early 18th century. We actually had a tour guide for Würzburg, who seemed to take great pains to remind us regularly that the allies did severe damage to the Würzburger Residenz and even more severe damage to the town towards the end of the second world war. While describing this treatment of Würzburg as inexplicable, she also took pains to explain to us the strategic importance of the place as a junction in the centre of Germany to enable commodities and supplies to traverse the country.
On the Friday, we were taken on a rather glorious wine tour described in Verse 5 of the song, where we got to sample Franconian wines of several grape varieties.
Woe betide you if you suggest that the Franconian wine bottle resembles the Mateus Rose bottle. The Franconians are very clear that they went for the above shape first. Got it?
If the song lyric is to be believed, we were actually sort-of sampling/selecting the wines for the wedding breakfast. In truth it seems highly unlikely that the actual wines for the actual wedding were not already ensconced in the Schloss ready for the hoards who were due to descend on the place (ascend to the place?) the next day.
The Wedding Day, Schloss Mainberg, 18 May 1996
As Verse 6 of the song suggests, by the Saturday we had no idea where we were or why we were there.
So I have engaged the services of Dr Kevin Parker who, along with wife Kate, took the sensible precaution of turning up just for the wedding, so they might have been in some sort of decent order for the ceremony.
Below is Kevin’s take on the event.
...we flew out to Germany on the Friday evening, and left fairly early on the Sunday morning (I think we went by car from Schweinfurt up to Frankfurt Airport). So my striking memories are in order: Walking around Schweinfurt market on Saturday am. Being so impressed with the erudite and multi-lingual minister at the service. Watching the log cutting ceremony on the steps outside the church (and observing which half of the newly married couple was doing most of the work of sawing). Going up to the Castle and having ‘kaffee und kuchen’ provided by local ladies to keep us going while being shown around. This then meant we could have a proper meal at a proper dinner time, and has been an innovation I have recommended to participants in all future weddings I’ve been involved with! I also seem to remember talking to Prof Mike Smith’s new fiancee/wife [Marianna] to see whether my small vocabulary of Slovenian words had any counterpart in Slovakian, but I’m not sure whether pronunciation was good enough for her to tell!
Kevin does not describe the party in Schloss Mainberg, but that’s Ok, as I have plenty of pictures. All of the pictures in this Ogblog were supplied to me by The Mainellis soon after the wedding – the exact provenance of each is probably lost in the mists of time.
While the Parkers (and several other guests) left the scene on the Sunday, Janie and I stuck around for a while longer – not least some informal partying on the Sunday. What little I remember of that (and the music playlists from the tapes I made for Michael & Elisabeth to help make that party swing) will be covered in the subsequent Ogblog pieces.
wow! and now the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of the City of London whom I know! This world gets smaller.