“See? There’s the bishop now!”

Needless to say, Steve and I were besides ourselves. Here we were in small-town (er, I mean, village) Germany, watching a festival in the making. A festival put on for no other reason than to celebrate. It wasn’t for tourists. It wasn’t for money. It was what the village simply did to celebrate.

Now, this was enough for me. I was completely happy with the fact that I got to see amazing history and tradition, pure Germany if you will, before my very eyes. But God is nuts.

“Come, join the parade!” Steve and I were beckoned.

Ummmmm…. ok.

So, we joined the parade, which went around the town, and found ourselves filing into the church for mass. The mass I was going to have to leave early to make my 20:00 train was suddenly un-leave-able. I was in the middle of a crowd of 500—250 of which stood outside. Yes, I got into a mass for the village that even half of the village didn’t even get to attend. Ridiculous.