Day 28 – Part Drei – Who are these people?

At school today these two Italian students told me of an authentic Italian restaurant near where they live and I just had to try it – been eating waaayyy too much döner lately.

I take a couple of trams to get there and after about fifteen minutes of walking around, I finally find it. It’s pretty cool – tables scattered haphazardly around a large bright room. I grab a seat at a table big enough for 8 as all of the smaller ones were reserved. It takes about 20 minutes for someone to take my order and 8 minutes after that they bring me my pizza – mushrooms and cream cheese. It was delicious.

Just as I’m finishing I’m joined at my table by eight Germans (or so they say – I think one of them was from Austria). As they’re chatting away and I’m working on the design for the second-floor bathroom reno, these two guys enter the bar dressed in olde-timey clothes carrying these giant walking sticks. One of them taps his stick on the floor to get everyone’s attention, makes a forty-seconds-long speech in German and then walks around the bar collecting money from all the patrons

My tablemates explain:

• Every year, all across Germany about a thousand young craftsmen, woodworkers, tailors, seamstresses, and trades people put all their stuff in storage and head out on a journey that a) cannot be less than three year and b) during which they are not allowed to pass within a fifty kilometer radius of their hometown.
• They carry a book with them that the mayor (of each city that they visit) signs
• They mayor also directs them to places they can find work in their area
• They are not allowed to ask for money
• They are not allowed to pay for travel (hitchhiking is popular)
• I think the goal is to learn how their craft is practiced outside of where they live

This is really all that I can remember. One of the girls (who happened to be dressed like a sailor) said they are called Walz. And now that I’m done writing this post, I’m going to go see what Wikipedia has to say about these guys. Seems very strange to my Canadian mind.