Beers with the boss

So Thursday was stressful and creepy (see That was weird), and Friday sucked knowing I would have to work a whole day and then ride the train for 5 hours to go back and visit my family in Saarland for the long weekend.

So I'm there, at my desk (well, not my desk, but the desk I get to use while some co-worker is on an unusually long vacation...), drudging along as usual... every so often drawing some circuit element or something. Then I hear my boss. He had only been here 2 of the 9 days I had worked so far. I think he was on vacation or at a conference or some combination of those two. Then I heard someone brushing his teeth at the lab sink... due to an identical experience later in the day, I'm going to assume it was my boss brushing his teeth.

Anyways, about 20 minutes later, he goes around and invites everyone to the Bergkirchweih, with the plan to head there at 12:30pm. The Bergkirchweih is one of the biggest draws of Erlangen, it being the 3rd largest Volksfest in Germany. It started the evening before, and riding around on the buses with my luggage I got to see droves of people flocking there. All the teenagers in town seemed to be drunk, and it was great to see drunk bike riders weaving through traffic (Erlangen is a huge bike town). It looked like a whole lot of fun, and I was sad that I couldn't partake :-(.

Anywho, hearing my boss's invite totally made up for all the stress of Thursday and the not being able to attend the night before. I mean this was a chance to go to the Fest and miss work and drink while doing so! Later I even learned that my boss was buying! So we get there, and most people ordered non-alcoholic beverages or Radlers (half beer, half pop) or smaller beers, but I ordered a Maß. Most of my coworkers looked at me, but they didn't really care that much... after all, I was an American. (You'd be amazed how much you can get away with for that very reason.) I also ordered bratwurst and sauerkraut, just to totally German it up. Then of course, I got a picture with my boss, both with our beers, just to immortalize this story. (I'm obviously not posting it here though...)

I had originally intended to end the work day after the mid-day excursion, but after a liter of beer, I decided to go back to work for an hour. When I got back, I saw my boss brushing his teeth at the lab sink. About 5 seconds later I found out why. The odor of beer, sauerkraut and bratwurst was now on my breath. I went to talk to my boss to ask him about an assignment he had given me, and noticed that his breath smelled minty fresh (unlike mine). Then I went back to work, doing vector wave field calculations for an elliptical cylinder (a.k.a. God knows what) for an hour, with a reasonable buzz still on.