Kegeln & Fruit Salad

Well, Friday night was a milestone night for me. After having lived in Germany for more than 5.5 years total I finally went Kegeln for the first time. What a great time.

We went for Hannah's birthday and had a really enjoyable time. Kegeln is basically bowling with nine pins, smaller lighter balls, and narrower lanes. The other difference, which I really enjoyed was the way the lanes were designed. The small Greek restaurant in our neighborhood has two lanes. So, we had a lane all to ourselves inside of one room. In another room there was another lane. The The technical aspects were also cool. The pins were on strings, which are used to pull the pins up and set them in the correct position. The ball delivery system was done with a lot of help from gravity. This was technically interesting and very quiet. This meant relaxing for me.

In Kegeln, you pay by the hour and by the glass of sprite or juice. The hourly charge is very reasonable (6 €). The drinks on the other hand were standard restaurant prices. That was a bit of a bummer, since we forgot to tell the kids to drink slowly. Buying drinks is pretty much a standard part of kegeln.

Since the price was hourly, the kids could throw the ball as often as we had time in the 1.5 hours we stayed. In the first 2 rounds we played - knock down as many pins as possible.

In the 3rd round Spencer taught us a game he learned at a similar birthday party a few months ago - "hohe Hausnummer", or build a big number with 3 chances. We were building numbers with three digits. So, if you roll a 2 on your 1st try, that should be the last digit. Then you hope that you roll a 6 later to use as the first digit. This was also a fun game. The two lowest scores were 034 or 064. They both wished we had played "niedrige Hausnummer", or build a small number. The two highest scores were 653 & 642.

The remaining stories are unrelated to Kegeln, but I mention them as part of Hannah's Birthday party. After returning home and eating we rounded out the evening with a fun game of Obstsalat (fruit salad) or Fruit Basket as it is called in America. This was a fun time. The boy at the party got a bit bored with the game and instead of switching chairs only when his designated fruit was called, he moved basically every time. I called him a Birne-Apfel-Erdbeer-Banana. Ian and Emma stayed up and got to enjoy the game. Emma didn't like being in the middle though and so we would just call Obstsalat every time it happened, and she could then quickly find a chair.

The same boy who liked the game so much he created his own "plug-in" for the game, happened to be the only boy at the party (other than Spencer). He is a nice kid and I mention him here because of what he told his mother after the party. He and his mother were just leaving our house, when he told his her - if I had known what the group gift (gemeinsames Geschenk) for Hannah was (a Polly Pocket playhouse), I wouldn't have joined in. His mother then realized that she had forgotten to give us the money for the group gift and returned to our house. At that point she related the story about her son's impressions of the party with all girls - priceless.