A weekend of Dance, Music, Culture, Scottish madness, exotic games of hurling and Tim’s pies!

What else could one have asked for last weekend on an organic farm but a 3 day long Irish festival with top quality folk music from Ireland, Germany, Austria and Britain. Moving forward from the success of last year’s festival, we increased the number of bands taking part, covering the wide spectrum of Irish music played by German and Irish bands in Germany in addition to traditional German folk music played by native German bands and, of course, guest artists from Ireland. In total there was a total of 5 stages; 3 open-air and 2 indoor.

On a very wet Friday evening the festival opened (indoors thankfully) with the introduction of the Green Farm song by Paul Daly accompanied by Alison Moffat and Frank McGlynn. The Rose of Tralee contest followed where we had 6 beautiful and fantastic girls take the stage for the Munich heat. Shane McAvinchey and his dancers of Rince Tir na nOg provided us with the cream of Irish dancing at the intervals.


The winner on the night was Jessica Kreuz, a midwife whose mother hails from Tipperary town. Jessica will head for Frankfurt next weekend to take part in the German Rose finale. Paul Daly and his band entertained the crowds till late in the night with many hits including “Galway girl” and “St. Patrick’s day in Munich”.

After a night of rain, the weather took a turn for the better and Saturday beheld an afternoon of plenty music and Irish dancing on the 5 stages. Among other facilities the festival offered on-site camping and parking, a free shuttle bus service from the local train station to the festival site, beer tents, sessions, workshops, organised catering, an Irish market, bathing in the on site lake, kids’ playground and an open stage for visiting musicians.

The campers arrived in their droves and set up camp by the lake and Riverland stage while the overflow headed for the back where the Highland Games were beginning. The Highland games thanks to the Munich Caledonians and the Munich Scottish Association provided the crowds with plenty entertainment for the adults and kids alike with caber tossing, welly throwing, sack racing and the much loved egg and spoon race. Munich’s pipebands entertained the crowds along which was followed by sword dancing, Scottish country dancing and a ceilidh. The music continued on the various stages with the highlight at the end of the day being the Bavarian-Irish Ceili by the “Well Buam” and the “Munich Ceili band”.

While the bands took to their stages, people wandered about the many stands selling their paintings, guitars, irish ware’s, food and the DIF info stand provided all the information one needed as well as selling the bands CD’s or a bottle of chef brown sauce or even an Odlums brown bread mix. Tim’s pies went down as always a treat.

Sliotar were the last to take the stage in the Murphy’s festival hall on Saturday night and brought the roof down with their stunning Irish traditional music with a rock flair to it.

The night didn’t finish there as all the musicians from the day, along with the many campers and DIF volunteers congregated into the Saloon bar and had the biggest Irish trad session on the continent that night. Rumour has it that there was Irish dancing on the tables still going at 5.30am. Sunday morning!!

The sunshine awoke us to a glorious day with another fulfilled stage plan of dancing and music. The Sunday also provided the spectators to an Irish sports day with the München Colmcilles GAA club donning their skills of Gaelic football and hurling. The hurling turned out to be the more favourite of the two sports and spectators as young as three years of age joined in on the banter. The parents and underage hurlers provided the crowds with very entertaining demonstration games. One reporter from a local paper described hurling as a very exotic sport where they play with oversized cooking spoons!?!

The Munich rugby club took to the field after the Colmcilles to give a fine display of their sport with kids and adults alike taking part.

As the green farm festival was coming to an end, the cream of Irish and Euro Folk music was on stage with Sarah McQuaid and Irish-steirisch.

As the last encore was played in the hall, the DIF volunteers and organisers gathered their belongings and said goodbye to one another with a smile of satisfaction and the same thought …”That was one hell of a do”

Until Greenfarm Festival 2010!!!.
[further pictures in the gallery]

On Monday we posted a Gaelic football video.

• ladies football
• mens football
• mens hurling
• underage hurling

The best way to get in contact is either through the members message board (just sign up and introduce yourself) or contact the club committee. The senior teams meet twice a week, while the underage team meets on Saturday afternoon. Check out our information about our training times. Don’t worry if you have not played before, or you haven’t played in a long time. We have trained coaches available on hand to teach you the basic skills of the games.

If you are looking for a fun way to meet other expats and local Germans, through sport then this is the perhaps the club for you. Munich Colmcilles is a very social club, and we organise many events through out the year. There are 13 nationalities in the club and players ages range from 5 to 50.

GAA is fun for young and old. Looking forward to seeing you on a pitch sometime ! So get in touch

An adventure- which started when we had to find the right ubahn to the hostel. And then make the non-English speaking lady at the hostel understand that Daire – who booked the rooms for all of us was yet to come and pay. To cut a looong conversation short: We couldn’t convince the old lady that we were no criminals but after diplomatic talks at least we were allowed to leave our bags in the rooms of the girls who already booked in the night before.
So finally we headed out for our first night in lovely warm Barcelona for our first tapas and Sangria.

In the morning – after a loud night (who knew a toilet and a coffee machine could make such noises?) in the luxurious hostel – the girls had some nice breakfast in the cafe at the corner while the lads already played their first match. For organisational reasons the tournament was split up at three pitches on different locations which was a shame cos the girl’s didn’t get to see the boys play and vice versa.
But not only by the weather it promised to be a good tournament – with allegedly the highest number of teams travelling ever – including Marbella’s first ever participation in a European tournament.
The ground where the girl’s played was great with soft grass, a fantastic view over Barcelona and they even provided us with some rather appetizing young men training their muscles. So with these perfect conditions the girls got better and better by each game and once again one could see how far this team will go in time to come. The girls had to fight some seriously tough teams which showed the exceptionally high standard of the European league this year.
For the finals and semi-finals the girls were transported by bus to “..the best bit of grass in Barcelona..” where the boys played at the other end of town. A bit sleepy but nevertheless exited the girl’s joined the boys and soon were to get ready for the match for the third place against Paris. After a long and arduous tournament (the final was only at 7:30!) the girl’s still gave an exceptionally good performance in their last game of the season- cheered by the boys. Paris girls won in a close match – la prochaine fois nous vincherons!!:-)
The Munich lads strengthened the Madrid team – Fair play to you for travelling down and playing for a different team, lads!
Marbella won the Men’s tournament and The Hague won the overall European League.

After a pretty tiring and long day we headed back to our hostel and rested our wounded bodies for a bit before it was time to head off to the evening programme. The meal was held in the super-luxury version of our Irish bars in Munich -the “George Payne” in the heart of Barcelona.
After a long celebration ceremony, a quick raffle and a very nice photo-show the party started.
Over the course of the night, unfortunately, three girls from the Munich team got a bad taste of Barcelona’s criminal potential with their bags and purses being stolen.  As exciting and amazing as Barcelona is- it’s also a dangerous city which attracts a lot of shady people.
After a long, wild night some of us had to catch an early flight, others were able to enjoy one or two extra days in this great city.

All together it was quite an experience and a very special tournament. Thank you all for travelling down and playing for us – The Munich Colmcilles have developed an enormous strength over the last two years and are a serious contender for the European Championship 2007. The only question might be who’ll make it – The boys or the girls?
May the next season see even more improvement than this year and we hope to have you all with us when it starts again!
“We samma? Guad samma!!!”

Marie C. Marcks, P.R.O.

regards,

P.