We had a merry picnic on a summer evening in June at Cathy's place in Werthenbach to exchange photos, go over the answers to the Dublin rally, view the excursion film and look at Matthias Merzhäuser's slides. Here you see some of the picnickers taking a "tour" of Werthenbach. We were particularly pleased that Elmar Köninger (third from the right) could join that evening - as head of the "Verpflegungsbetriebe" at the Uni and staff member of the Irish Cottage Pub in Neunkirchen, he gave us expert help in organizing the drink for our Fair and the picnic!

We had fun recalling some of the leitmotif phrases from our excursion. May we share some of them with you? A word of explanation about our favorite one "hammer down," originally used by Matthias: It's trucker language for "drive someplace fast and directly," and we found ourselves adapting the phrase to all possible situations:

"We have to hammer down to the station to catch the 11:05 train" or "We're on the wrong side of Dublin; should we take the bus? -No, let's just hammer down O'Connell Street" or "How can I possibly eat this awful muffin? - Well, just hammer down!"