May 1 was Father’s Day in Germany. Now, I must warn you, Germany has a somewhat eccentric Father’s Day tradition. Instead of brunch and a new tie, the fathers get together (well, actually, males in general- whether with offspring or not - get together for this), find themselves a little wooden wagon, fill it with cases of beer, go walk into the fields pulling their wagon behind them, and get drunk.

I’m not kidding. They walk out into the fields, or the woods, or any other space qualifying as “nature”. With their wagons.

So, this wagon is called a “bollerwagen”, and it is widely known that Father’s Day is the day you drag out your kid’s “bollerwagen” and instead of filling it with toddlers, fill it with beer.

Soenke was out and about on Father’s Day (sadly, without his bollerwagen) and called me to alert me that “the first bollerwagen has been spotted!” More such alerts continued throughout the day.

My friend Elizabeth said that the fathers in her neighborhood seemed to be unable to pull together a bollerwagen, so they obtained a horse (yes, a live horse), some beer, and congregated together with the horse on the street corner for a few hours to congratulate themselves on surviving another year of fatherhood. I guess walking out into the fields was simply too much effort.

I hardly know what more to say about this tradition. It’s deeply ingrained in the German culture, so who am I to fight it? I am thankful that my husband doesn’t have a bollerwagen, nor does he find much interest in drinking a lot of beer.

In the slightly-less imaginative American tradition, Sophie made daddy a very special Father’s Day gift, as seen below: