A Swissman, a Northern Irishman, and an American walk into a bar...

I took a daytrip to Zurich with a couple friends that I met in my Sprachkurs in Göttingen a couple summers ago, Adrian and Glenn. Zurich is a cute little town (woah, I shouldn't call it little - it's about three times as big as Salzburg), and we did the Swiss thing. Had some fondue, had some Ovomaltine (not Ovaltine), and tried Rivella for the first time (I swear it's liquefied Smarties, meaning the American kind of Smarties, not the European kind). The highlight of the day, however, was that evening.

While contemplating whether or not we should actually pay a visit to the Stüssihof (don't ask), we decided to head back to a cafe we had passed earlier in the day, Cabaret Voltaire. It had a little bit of a Bohemian feel going on but was a bit modern in its own way, too. Now, we're all aware that Adrian is a bit sensitive to anywhere where the people lean a little too far to the left, a little too "links", but Glenn and I had both liked the place, and Adrian agreed to give it a try. When we walked in, we noticed we were a little underdressed, but it didn't really throw us off. We noticed there were quite a few native English speakers, too, but you expect that in a tourist town. It wasn't until we order a drink and were told that we didn't have to pay that we really knew something must be up. A few couples at the next table over noticed our confusion and decided to explain. That night the cafe was reserved for a private event, a wedding, which we had just accidentally crashed.




These couples were all good-natured and told us to enjoy ourselves since we were already there. They told us the bride was Swiss and the groom was Austrialian, (which explained all the English), and that they would get laugh out of the whole thing so not to worry. And when we considered leaving after the first drink, they convinced us not to. Everybody has try it once in their lives, I suppose. Unfortunately, the fun did not last long. Our mistake was standing up to check out the buffet. A cousin of the bride cornered us and asked us, "Kennen wir uns?" Only it was in Swiss German, so I didn't understand her at all. Luckily, Glenn caught it, but instead of playing the dumb card and saying something like "Oh, this is a private party? We didn't realize!" Glenn decided to tell her we knew the groom, which meant we were Australian. The key to really getting away with this stuff is to lie as little as possible. Oops. And just a hint, if you're from Northern Ireland, please don't tell people you're Australian. Because what ends up happening is the Australian bestman comes over and catches you in the lie, which is what happened. Glenn tried to explain to him that it had started out as an honest mistake and that the families at the next table over had more or less giving us their blessing to stay in their stead, but the bestman wasn't hearing any of it. It didn't help that Glenn thought the groom's name was Tom when it was really Dom. We ended up paying for one drink each and heading out (though we each had about a drink and a half, so we still had a win). By chance, in the street as we left we ran into the couples who had an encouraged us to stay. They laughed at us but were proud we tried. Hey, it's a decent story.

Oh, and as it turns out Cabaret Voltaire is the birthplace of Dadaism, so as far at venues to crash a wedding in go, this one was pretty cool. It would be hard to top, so I think I'm going to have to hang up my wedding crashing shoes.