openBC Christmas Party 2005

On Wednesday 14th December at 6.30pm 40 of us found ourselves in taxi’s going to an unknown address in Hamburg. The evening was a secret; all we knew was we had to bring trash presents for a German game called "Wichteln" (Yule club). After about 10 minutes of driving we came across a lovely Cafe called TH2 that was ours for the evening.

The evening started off with a speech from Lars Hinrichs giving a happy overview of the previous year at openBC. And new people were welcomed, yes we have grown again! The new additions to the team are:
Johannes Haus from Germany
Yuka Yano from Japan
Julika Schwaan from Germany
Udo Hamm from Switzerland

We welcomed them into the team and pondered over the fact that here at openBC headquarters we have about 17 different nationalities, making a VERY international environment and an enthralling place to work in!

Afterwards we sat down and ate some typical German food for this time of year – carrot and orange soup, followed by roast Duck, red cabbage, kale, potato casserole and much more! Dessert was roast apple with a custard sauce – leaving us full, contented and ready for more fun and games. Oh, I almost forgot, some of us washed the food down with some delicious sambuca

Then came the Wichteln, which involved all of us sitting in a circle and throwing dice. The rules where easy, throw a 6 and you could pick up a trash present (something you don’t want at home), throw another 6 you can steal someone elses present OR open your present (a lot of stealing was going on)! The presents really were trashy and very amusing, to name just a few: a furry pink Furby (I think this won the trashiest prize), bad taste crockery set, a crate with an empty bottle of water.

The openBC band was next to strut their stuff and they were excellent. After weeks of training they played us 3 songs:
* Mama’s and the Papa’s "Dream a little dream of me"
* Boney M "Sonny"
* Fairground Attraction "Perfect"

More importantly the openBC band members are:
Tanja Möbius was singing,
Sabine Brockmeier on bass,
Daniel Silva Yanez on electric guitar,
Erick Dennis on the bongo’s.

Cathy Bazabas also surprised us with a song about finding love in Göttingen, sung beautifully in French..

Now it was (almost) everyone else’s turn to sing because the Karaoke was unveiled and the next 4 hours were spent with people singing everything from Frank Sinatra "My Way" (Timo I am still very impressed) to "I’m a barbie girl"!

I think the Karaoke was turned off at about 12.30am and the night at TH2 came to an end at about 1.30am. A big thank you goes out to Lars Hinrichs, Daniela Neumann and everyone else who helped organise this fabulous, fun-filled night!

Not that it stopped there, some of us went onto a Salsa club round the corner from work called "La Macumba" until about 3am – yes lots of tired faces at work the next day!

For photos please follow this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/openbc/sets/1590239/