Wednesday 22 December 2010

On a Winning Streak

Two weeks ago, I had two Christmassy get-togethers one after the other.

On the Friday night, we had our annual Christmas dinner at work.
As I have been working for this company for 8 1/2 years now, I have witnessed the establishing of some traditions, my favourite of which is playing Bingo for the presents.

This is how it works:
Our bosses get Christmas presents sent from business partners, manufacturers and customers, and all those presents are collected in an extra room. At the Christmas party, we play Bingo; who has "BINGO" first, gets No. 1, the next one No. 2 and so on. A week later, we are all called into the extra room where all the presents are, and No. 1 has the choice of ALL presents, followed by No. 2 and so on; so, you can imagine the choice is not so great if you happen to have Bingo quite late in the game.
I came 28th (of 30!) and so I already knew that I wasn't going to get anything "great" - which is perfectly alright because this bingo game with all my colleagues is so much fun, the outcome doesn't really matter (there were still 3 presents to choose from when it was my turn, and I went for a rather big box of traditional German Christmas cookies called "Aachener Printen").
The following day, Saturday, I got everything ready for an evening with a group of friends, one of which came all the way from Hamburg (this is the other end of Germany from where I live - about 800 km, I think) just so that she could join the rest of us. She was to spend the night at my place, so I got the spare room ready for her.
I made pizza, my friends brought salad and drinks and chocolates, and after we'd finished eating, we played what we call "Schrottwichteln":
Everyone brings a nicely wrapped present - it is supposed to be something that you have been given yourself, but do not need, want or like, but can't really just throw away (imagine the horrid vase you had 5 years ago for your birthday from Auntie So-and-So? You get the idea, I guess!). So, yes, it is not supposed to be a nice present but something everybody can have a good laugh about.

Everyone places their own parcel in front of themselves, and then the dice come out.
With throwing the dices clock-wise, the presents are given to the person sitting next to you clock-wise as well. If someone throws a match, direction is changed. If someone throws a double six, they can swap parcel with someone else.
The whole thing is timed for, say, 10 minutes.
When the time is up, everyone should have a different parcel in front of them - not their own. So you have no idea what you are going to get, but you know who is going to get your "special" present :-)
The unwrapping begins, accompanied by lots of laughter and funny faces, and of course you have to tell the others the history of this particular present.

What I did with the present I received - a cheese platter, so actually not that bad a present at all - I sat on it accidentally... and I am sorry to report that it did not withstand 57 kg :-D
It was a great evening with my friends, and I felt on a Winning Streak; I think you understand why, don't you!

4 comments:

  1. Love these pictures and the descriptions of your Christmas parties. Too bad about the cheese plate; it was really a nice gift.

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  2. Thank you, Jill! Ah, it didn't really matter. That's one cheese plate less in the world, and whoever originally gave it to my friend will never know what happened :-)

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  3. Interesting going back to some of your old posts and learning bits more about you and your life.

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    1. I am glad someone does, Graham! You know, every now and then, I go back to old posts of mine and marvel at all the things I have already put here. Sometimes I even think, "wow! did I really write that?", and funnily enough, it was during my worst times that I wrote my best bits.

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