St. Patrick's Day - 14th March, 2004
(Click the thumbnails for the big picture.)
Since the German government doesn't give a day off to people for other countries national holidays, it was decided to hold the St. Patrick's Day celebrations on the weekend before. More information can be found about the whole thing here: www.MunichNights.com/stpatricksday.htm
Here's how I started my day off. Green hair and a slightly confused look on my face.
A good feed to get things started on the right foot. You can't beat a belly full of grease before a day on the pints.
Speaking of pints, here's a grand looking one.
The remainder of the can of green hairspray didn't last long.
Resevoir Dogs on the move.
We took the S-Bahn from Marienplatz over to Rosenheimerplatz and waited for the parade. Ok, we walked back a little towards the city to meet up with it. Had a beer in a little bar nearby too.
The white convertible above apparently has the mayor of Munich, Christian Ude in it. You can't see him due to the, erm, Irish soldier in the way. The Porsche has the parade princess in it. She was apparently chosen in a competition back in December which brilliantly was held in Bondi, an Australian bar.
These photos were supposed to be zoomed in much further. Unfortunatly I did the resizing on all the photos before I edited them and of course I had no backups. Oh well.
The Brazilian contingent.
The parade ran from Ludwigsbrücke up along Rosenheimerstr and ultimately into Kult Fabrik. It was wrong. The parade has always run along Leopoldstr and that's where it belongs. Hopefully the powers that be will get it together next year and put it back on track.
As the parade made it's way in the main entrance of Kult Fabrik (The Artist Formerly Known as KPO), we ducked off through a side entrance and headed for the festival hall.
We did not stay long. There were two good things about this festival hall place. One was the cute barmaid at the bar as you walked in and the second was that we were ahead of the crowd of people above and not behind it. Maybe we didn't give it enough of a chance, but when we arrived it was basically a big, dark, dirty hall with nothing happening. It'd be something to say that it lacked an Irish atmosphere, but in truth it lacked any atmosphere at all. We decided that we'd be muh better served (in all senses) by heading back into Kilian's.
And that's what we did. Ok, some time was spent pouring over a copy of Cityheat that someone picked up, trying to decide on new partners for one and all.
Apparently I made it onto German TV. When we were coming back into town there was a camera man at the top of the escalator steps and I may have waved subtely in his general direction.
Irish Coffees all round. Christ, Eamon McCormack would have shot me if I'd served them up with that much cream on the top.
She sees, she demonstrates and she educates. Chris had no idea who Dr. Evil was.
Drink, Feck, Girls, Arse!!!
Smile, though your heart is aching. Smile, even though it's breaking....
You may notice a few people above wearing what looks remarkably like a fluffy pink hat. Best not to dwell on it too much.
Memo with blonde hair. Dunno who the bloke on the right is. These things just seem to slip onto my web pages. Nothing to do with me at all.
This was the point at which I left to go home. Unfortunately I happened to look at the time and realised that it was only about 7pm. So of course it was necessary to plough back inside and get on with it.
My Precious, those nasty Hobbits will never get the Precious.
Irish, Germans, Americans, Dutch, English, and I'm sure plenty of other nationalities besides, all had a great day, a lot of drinks and a lot of laughs.