Staggered

In Scotland, a stag party (bachelor party) is called a ‘stagger’ for reasons that become rapidly obvious. The one I was involved with started last Thursday and ended… ish…  on Monday night.

Eight of us. Five days of mayhem. We first went to a place called Lochter where we shot guns at things –

The grey-haired one with the gun is me. They really did let me have a gun!

Then we had a go on a Segway, steering the thing around a course. The funniest member of the group flattened every cone but nobody managed to get a photo. We were all laughing too hard. I don’t yet have the photo of me on a Segway but I will, soon.

Next up was blindfold driving. Not in some little kartie. In a 4×4..

One go each at the blindfold and one go as navigator. Apparently ‘That way!’ is not a sensible instruction to give a blindfold driver so there was a pause while we regained our composure.

Finally, gokarts. Everyone knows about gokarts. Like riding a souped-up lawnmower with no suspension and crap steering. I didn’t win but at least I stayed on the track. And it was quite a track too. Couldn’t get much of it in one photo.

That was Thursday. Day one. We went for ‘a couple of beers’ afterwards and eventually returned home containing rather more than a couple of beers…

On Friday we moved the event to Frankfurt (FRA). Along a little street called Elefantengasse (yes, really) there is an Italian restaurant called Amici Trattoria where you’ll get the best spaghetti carbonara I’ve ever tasted.

The owner of that restaurant might tell you of the time a Welshman from Scotland tried to explain, in English, to an Italian immigrant in Germany, why one of the group was dressed as a lobster. Or he might prefer to forget that even happened. There was quite a bit of alcohol involved too.

There are ashtrays everywhere in Frankfurt. Even indoors in most of the pubs. The nearby corner shop had a table outside with an ashtray on it. Cigarettes… I bought Winstons at 6 euros for a pack of 24. There are no Doors of Shame in the shops, everything is on open display. It was like a visit to civilisation for me.

The younger members of the group had never experienced indoor pub smoking but they agreed it was something they could easily get used to. When the UK comes to its senses, if it ever does, smoky pubs will return.

Saturday was a recovery day, during which we sampled real German food. I like German food. It’s almost entirely made of meat.

Then… an organised pub crawl. A first for me at least. I’d only ever been on disorganised ones before. We had a guide who was on her first outing and who spoke almost no English. This made things quite interesting since none of us spoke German.

One of the pubs she took us to was an Irish pub playing Proclaimers music. In the middle of Frankfurt. Well, why not? They had Bushmills so I just accepted it all. Another one was Mexican themed and once inside, we were issued sombreros and tequila. They wouldn’t let us keep the sombreros though.

Our guide was also very like Boss in appearance except she smiled a lot more and didn’t roll her eyes quite so much. Here she is with the groom-to-be.

One of the group went missing during the evening but turned up unharmed and smiling next day. There was no real need to ask where he’d been. The best man spent the whole of Sunday in bed, wishing he had died. He didn’t but he did miss the locked-room experience. Also the shisha bar and the Sunday drinking – although that was limited because we’d all reached full capacity the night before.

Monday, we had all day because the flight wasn’t until 9 pm so we left the bags at the hotel and went to play laser tag. Good game, but I should have put more thought into my clothing. I thought dressing in black was ideal but my shirt had pinstripe lines. Some of the lines were white.

Under UV light, I lit up like Tron. So I didn’t win at that either, having made myself a pretty easy target. But I did get to shoot everyone which was fun.

A fun weekend that started and ended with a gun in my hands. With beer and whisky and cheap smokes and indoor smoking and nobody complaining… who could ask for more?

There was only one thing missing. No strippers.