A Bachelor Party at Red Robin... Nope, a Castle

Some of the greatest moments while traveling come when experiencing a culture up close and personal. A friend I've met here, a local to Kärnten, Matthias, is getting married on March 29th. It is an event I look forward to. Prior to any guy's wedding though, they've got to have a bachelor party. In Austria, the do bachelor parties right.

At 6:00pm on Friday evening some of the guys picked me up and we drove 15 minutes to a castle. They have converted this old fortress into a restaurant and dinner theatre. You know, the interactive kind where they pull people from the tables and dress them up and make them do silly things. Well if you don't know read on (hopefully you'll read on anyways).

Somehow I think this castle was originally intended for a less inviting gesture than fun and dinner. I also think that the dinners here may have been far smaller and much less enjoyable.

Past the mote and through the gated gauntlet of boiling oil and deadly arrows we found our table.

Not long into things, before we had a chance to dirty their old school costumes, the story began. While I'm learning Germany quickly, following an accented middle age version of the language left me lost but I can pretty well figure out from the pictures that Matthias (in the t-shirt) was some sort of prince and below is his bearded princess.

Through some jousting event Matthias earned his knighthood.
Andy and Rudy were the unfortunate members of our party who were chosen to be the servant and the maid. Not only did the two guys look like goofs, but they had to serve us the meal.
Soup came first, followed by meat, and on the side some sauerkraut and potatoes and more meat, followed by a bit more meat just in case our tummies had not had enough.
Our place setting included a wooden plate with a knife - no fork, no spoon - and a metal dish for bones.
Schnapps is a specialty in this region of Austria so for dessert they brought us each a shot of the local pride. Only moments after getting the picture below I knocked the stack of shot glasses over and most of them shattered on the ground.

Instead of making me pay cash they figured I could suffer a slightly more physical punishment. After some abuse from my friends I managed to weasel my hands out and free myself but in the mean time my head was pinned.
Before I found my freedom, as any male would do Matthias quickly took advantage of the situation. Though he only posed for the picture somebody else whacked me right in the bum with a wooden sword; full swing! Ironically it reminded me of getting punished as a child.
Rudy managed to lose the maid's dress and find some lederhosen. The dinner show quickly turned into a dance show.
Somewhere near midnight about 10-15 girls joined us and things turned to hang out and dance time. With fatigue the camera ceased and I spent much of the rest of the night chillin and chatting in my broken German; I guess I don't dance.

About three forevers later, still having a good time but desperately needing sleep, we ended up at some tiny dance club that was near enough my house to walk home. I trudged in at 4:50am and Dougg Custer, the missionary friend at whose house I'm staying, had gone to bed, slept 7 hours, woke up and had began planning a conference on his laptop all before my night ended. Laughing he looked up and said, "Oh, I forgot to warn you, Austrian wedding parties last all night. Enjoy the morning."