Yesterday we celebrated our "Richtfest" - apparently it's called topping-off or topping-out in English, although I must say I'd never heard of it. Normally this is celebrated the moment the last beam goes on the roof, although in the day and age of pre-fabs like ours, this is now held whenever the foreman sees fit and that tends to be when people can enter the house and move around it without any kind of danger to life and limb.. You only get a couple of days warning to organise food, drink, tables and chairs. Invitations go out to family, freinds, new neighbours and the joiners and architect. There were about 30 of us.
One of the roof joiners gets on the scaffolding with the people who are building - the good missus refused to climb onto the scaffolding, so I went up on my own with Florian.
Then two glasses are filled with wine (or schnapps) and the blessing ceremony can begin.
After the blessing the glasses are emptied in one go and thrown to the ground. A half pint of wine in about 5 seconds on an empty stomach is no joke! If they break, it brings good luck to the house, if they don't then...
Well, at least Florian's glass broke, that's the main thing.
Now for some impressions of the party:
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