August 29th, Day 5 - Schroeder's

At around 8:30 in the morning, we arrive at our campsite near San Francisco. We still have to wait for Franz's bus, with which our supervisors have already picked up the tents, air mattresses, and cooking utensils. Then it's time to set up the tents, inflate the air mattresses, set up the grill, and chop vegetables.

At 3:00 PM, we then drive in traditional costumes to our performance. Our location today: Schroeder's - a tavern in downtown San Francisco. Inside, we are initially surprised by the aesthetics. There are pictures hanging on huge canvases on the walls, and in the middle, there are some display cases with beer steins of various designs. Clay steins from various German breweries, Oktoberfest steins from different years, steins with or without pewter lids, and so on.

We quickly set up and are ready to go at 5:00 PM. In the first part of our performance, we play some more laid-back polkas. The audience is, as so often here, a bit hard to reach, but the entire kitchen staff loves us.
At 6:30 PM, we take a food break. We have pretzels - which were surprisingly good - sausages, Brussels sprouts, and a few other German delicacies. An hour later, we continue and start playing the hits. This time, even the audience shows a bit more reaction than just sporadic tired applause.

After our performance in downtown San Francisco - how cool is that - we drive back to the campsite, this time taking the route over the Golden Gate Bridge. Although it's already dark, this structure is still impressive.

Once we arrive, the last few tents need to be set up quickly before many people snuggle directly into their sleeping bags and catch up on the sleep they lost last night. A few others look for shooting stars and constellations in the clear starry sky before the surprisingly cool temperatures also prompt them to retreat to their tents.