On Being Clear, The Difficulty Of

This weekend, we went to a wine festival in the vineyards surrounding the beautiful city of Würzburg. We were a group of about sixteen people. Four of us went there a little earlier to reserve a table. 

The four of us got lucky and nabbed an empty beer table in the perfect location: in between the vines, with a nice view over the Main river and the Altstadt (old town) of Würzburg, close enough to the funk band to hear the songs they played, but far enough away to be able to talk with each other. 

25 Jahre Hoffest am Stein

Now, a German beer table holds eight people comfortably and ten people with restricted elbow-room. Twelve begin to pose a challenge if you're trying to keep all butt cheeks on the benches. Fourteen is possible if partners sit on each others' laps. Sixteen... maybe if everybody's a size-zero super model, but we didn't have a single one of those among us that night. 

Anyway, the vanguard of four had to defend our table for quite some time before the rest of the group made an appearance. Because a wine festival in Southern Germany fills up faster than the service personnel can chill the wine, we got a lot of requests from strangers, whether a few more people could squeeze in with us at our table. 

One of those requests became a sort of running gag throughout the night. It went something like this:


A couple approaches the Vanguard of Four, who are trying to appear as wide and bench-filling as possible. 

Wife: Do you guys have room for two more people at your table?

We: Sorry, we're expecting at least twelve more ourselves.

Husband and wife: Ha ha! 

Husband (already moving on): That's going to be tight.

Wife (still looking at us expectantly): So do you guys have room for two more people at your table?

We: O_o ???? Only if by 'people' you mean wine bottles...