first of may rite nonesense.

[micha]

just feel like giving you a view on a beautiful rite we have over here to celebrate first of may.
you all heard about the flowers and bees and this stuff, and if you are young, stupid, and in love in this region of germany, you're bound in honour to station a tree for the girl you like.
other people take chocolate or a bouquet, over here it's a tree. a birch to be precise.
you spend a night with your friends cutting coulered paper into pieces and putting it together into colerfull whatevers (they look a bit like these things the cheerleaders pose around with) called "plümen", go into the forest, kill a birch in the size of preference, put these plümen into the green top of it, so it looks nice, wait till midnight and put it up right in front of your beloved ones house.
you give a box of beer to the youth of the village your girl lives in, in hope to not get beat up or your tree stolen that way.
during the whole process its a must to drink as much beer as you can, make noise, and you're allowed to do about every nonesense you want to do.
it's kind of anarchy night.
oh, and you won't find a girl on the streets in that night.
their job consist of sitting in their room together with their friends (drinking usually), hide from the males and listen to the chaos going on in front of your house. once the tree is done they're allowed to come outside and see the result.

tonight I'm gonna help a friend out putting his tree. I think we're a group of about ten people, and I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a lot of fun!!
hopefully the weather is gonna be kind, just had a hail-storm this afternoon, and I'd not like to get wet, since we're about to travel by feet. it's a about 20km AFAIK, and it's gonna be freaking cold anyway.

it's pretty hard work, expecially if you have to carry all that beer, it's pure nonesense, but somehow I can't help it, it's just genious!!


do you have any rites or customs to celebrate first of may? or don't you do at all?
I'm just curious to hear wether other folks have compareable things going on tonight!!
still need to kill another couple of hours!! gimme your stories!

[Zerberus]

Thank god I´m in France right now, some German 1st of May celebrations ar just nuts, regardless of where you are (For ex: Half the village wrapping up a pole in ribbons (drunk) while the other half leaves a wave of destruction (drunk), like in Eisenbrechtshofen near Augsburg).... I´ll just watch bands play and get smashed before tearing the whole shebang down tomorrow

[Nazgul]

we just have a big bonfire. almost every village has one and people come together and drink, eat, drink more, piss, repeat . that kinda thing.

you're gonna walk 20km's?? that will take you what, 3-4 hours? I'd die!

[finnman]

Hey Henrik,
What do my Danish buddies do on May 1.
Anything?
Finn

[Emthrax]

do you have any rites or customs to celebrate first of may? or don't you do at all?
I'm just curious to hear wether other folks have compareable things going on tonight!!
still need to kill another couple of hours!! gimme your stories!

Yes, I do Micha.
Very cool to hear that this is a national thing for you!
Here in America it isn't celebrated so much, Easter kind of overshadows May day. However, some folks celebrate May Eve or rather Beltane.
It's a fertility holiday that honors women especially, but also men as some do dance around a May pole (which is a huge phallicy, bwhahahaha!)
Some folks that honor the season leave flowers at the doors of loved ones, that's a favorite of children especially. This is not a much talked about holiday, and in fact it is quite frowned upon by some religous zealots in the States, but some do follow the Old Ways still.

Cheers,
Em

[HeWhoIs]

At some poin tomorrow I will get a phone call like this, "Hey hey, first of May, outdoor f*cking starts today!" That's as close to a May ritual as I have.

[RacerX]

You Krauts are KWAZY!!!

[Soap]

I'm gonna have to do a google and learn what this "May day" unkown holiday is and what its supposeively means or represents. This honestly is the first I've heard of it. Fertility...? Hmnn, my mind is all ready in the dirt.

To those like myself that never heard of it before heres a potentially helpful link.
Its one of a few links that provided info that actually made sense to me.
http://www.celticspirit.org/beltaine.htm

[Zerberus]

Honestly, I sometimes think the International Distress signal ("Mayday") is a result of the German festivities

[micha]

sorry for the late reply, I was kind of done yesterday...

the bonfire and the flowers in front of doors sound really nice too!! I'd like that!!
I somehow like these old fashioned festivals, anyway. it has this back-to-the-roots-vibe, if I have a look on how commercial most festivals are nowadays it's a real pleasure to see some folks just light a fire and dance or whatnot...

you don't have a pic of one of these maypoles Em, do you?


well, here's my story;
so this is my buddies. we met up around 11pm, and made our way by feet.
it was cold but thanks god not raining all that much.




and that's the view I had the following 3 hours; (or let's say, it would have been the view if there was any light to see something at all)


the guy on the right is the dude whos girl we were making happy that day btw.
he had the idea of taking this stupid wheelbarrow with us (keep in mind we were more or less constantly going uphill for three hours), but he was genious enough to set the rule; whoever is pushing that damn thing is allowed to choose what music the CDplayer was playing!!
the trick on this was, that he was the only hip-hop-guy, so the pic above was not often to be seen...


and that's the tree;



once we were there we had to see what a monster-tree he had cut!
it was about 16m and as you can imagne heavy as #~X*!!
on the left you can see how these colored plümen look like.
I'm sorry, I don't have a pic of the entire tree, I tried to, but either couldn't get it on an image, or I had to go that far away that the flash wasn't able to enlighten the scene, but here's the only result that counts anyway;




even though all this hiking sucked pretty much in between (I was back home around 7am), it was a whole lot of fun.
I just hope that girl is a keeper...

[horns666]

I thank Satan for the the first of May..

[RacerX]

Damn! Your buddy is ugly!

But the chick looks hot....

[horns666]

actually they both look pretty cold

and drunk!

and happy!

[quakana]

Well Apparently our first of May consists of Immigrants not going to work

[StukaJU87]

1st of da monf is when da welfare chex be commin'.