The bagpipe should not be missing: bagpipe player Benedikt Groh in the hall of the Masonic lodge “Zur Unigkeit”.
Image: Fabian Wilking
Robert Burns is a Scottish folk poet and national hero. Once a year, diplomats, bankers and lawyers remember a man who was not like them. Despite the strict ritual, there is a lot of drinking, dancing and laughing.
“See how the farmer wipes his knife; He'll cut you open when it's served,” the man in the kilt shouts sharply and stabs the large minced meat sausage lying on the table in front of him with a knife. Brian Laird, English teacher at Ruhr University Bochum, conjures up a haggis. “The Great Chief of the Puddin' Race!”
Shortly before, the national dish of Scotland, for which all the edible entrails produced by a sheep is pressed into its stomach, was brought to the stage in the ballroom of the Masonic Unity Lodge in Frankfurt's Bahnhofsviertel that Saturday evening to loud bagpipe music. . And now everyone is raising a toast to Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet who represented the ideals of the French Revolution, is still seen as a working-class hero and vivacious – said to have fathered 13 children with at least four wives – and died aged 37 as a result of his lifestyle. It won't be the last whiskey to go down guests' throats that night, with haggis immediately following – along with the classic additions of 'Neeps' and 'Tatties', aka turnips and mashed potatoes.