I joined a group from work for the Canstatter Volkfest this weekend, Stuttgart's "Oktoberfest" by American language, and apparently the second largest. It was raining all weekend, so there wasn't much wandering around done; it looked like a large carnival ride area at the entrance. I'm not sure how far down along the river it went, when I got to our area, I went in. Our group had two tables reserved inside one of the "tents", which I had taken to be tents, but were in fact huge, probably permanent structures holding hundreds, probably a few thousand people. We had a live band playing German folksongs that turned to American rock-n-roll as the night wore on. Our 23 Euro got us two steins of beer, half a chicken, and the entrance fee, though I think the committee organizing things might have eaten some of the costs. No wine available, so I partook in my first real beer drinking, taking hefeweizen at the memory of advice of my snobbier beer drinking friends. Not too bad, really. Every 15 minutes, which became every few minutes, the band struck up this diddy where everyone swung their steins back and forth and then toasted. The place was packed like sardines and far before much drink was had everyone was standing on the benches. After a few hours, someone was buying shots of Jaegermeister and I was convinced to take one. I got about 3/4 of it in my mouth before doubling foreward with a "Wholly Crap!"; man, that is nasty stuff. But, it was all done in spirit of the event, including the flashing green sunglasses, which are apparently trademark and particularly for certain members of our group each year. Later that night in the car I was telling Chris about the night while Kenai sat in the back. At the story of the Jaegermeister, though, he chimed in, "Mommy, you drank a bad drink?" "Mommy, why did the drink have a needle?" (Chris had to explain to me that one -- it was a shot) "Mommy, why did your friends give you the bad drink?" Good question. We've spent the last few days with questions about the shot, and I think he finally understood yesterday that no needle was involved, no matter how painful it was.