Party Time!

The hosts of this year’s event was MERMAID H3, which stands for Mature Enchantresses Roaming in Menopausal Abundance Indulging in Devious Shenanigans. The theme for Saturday’s party was Viking Mermaid in Drag or Flip-Flops in homage to Interscandi’s Viking roots. 

While Tasty Piss and Jesus Hickey Christ combined mermaid with Viking... 

…looks like Biggles and I were mermaids in drag.

It’s hard to tell, but this section was filled with the Swedish contigency in their matching outfits.

Strandpauli was a nice beach bar along the river. Our group had a private section with a BBQ dinner and dancing. 

Opee often accompanied me to the loo so I didn’t have to walk through all the Muggles alone.

As we were the last to arrive in our hostel room, we got single beds on opposite sides of the room, but that didn’t matter. Opee forgot to take off his fishnets before crawling into my bed in our warm room. 
 

Saturday Trails in Hamburg...

Unlike most hash weekends, the Saturday trails neither started at the venue nor involved getting on a tour bus. Instead we had to get ourselves to the run start in Poppenbuttel using public transportation. Opee had to leave 30 minutes earlier for the Ballbreaker trail, so we travelled separately. Luckily we had no problems, but plenty of people managed to not get to the start on time and spent much of the day lost. 

The Medium Trail was only supposed to be 9K, but I ended up doing 14.5K since the markings were so sparse that we occasionally ended up on other trails.

I appreciated that much of the trail was shaded in the woods. 

Opee clearly had fun on the Ballbreaker.

…and at his circle. 

 

Off to Hamburg...

The following morning, we flew to Berlin. It was very cool to see the Thames Barrier from the window.

We then quickly left London behind. We opted to fly round-trip to Berlin and then take a train to Hamburg where we’d be attending Interscandi 2024 before spending two nights with Jim in Berlin. 

This was the view from our room which we were sharing with two other couples at the Pyjama Hotel and Hostel located in the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s Red Light District. 

We grabbed some doner kebabs, then set off on the opening event: a pub crawl. We were lucky to be in the group with Wouldn’t Chew as she took us to some great craft beer bars. Along the way, Gay Sailor added some googly eyes to this fellow.

 

Graduation Time...

They were running a bit behind from the ceremony before hers, but eventually we were all invited into the cathedral. 

As much as we would have loved to have sat front and center, the need to drop off our bags at the coat check slowed us down enough that the center was full. 

At least we were at the end of a row on the side so we could still catch a glimpse of the ceremony, which opened with a choir. 

On our 31st wedding anniversary we had the pleasure of watching our eldest daughter presented as a Master of Research in Sustainable Futures, the only one with that particular degree. 

And luckily she walked down our side of the aisle and spotted us. 

Sadly we then had to kiss her goodbye as she was catching a bus back to campus for celebrating with friends and we were heading back to London before flying out the next morning to Germany. 

Here’s one more angle of Truro Cathedral caught from the train. 

The scenery was dramatic...

…including a giant white horse near Bratton Camp which was originally cut in the late 17th century. 
 

Truro Cathedral...

Built in 1910, Truro Cathedral is young compared to most other cathedrals in England, but it is very impressive and quite the location for a graduation ceremony.

Needless to say, we took a lot of photos...

…from lots of different angles.

 

A Quick Wander Around Truro...

We had a bit of time after the bus dropped us off in Truro before the ceremony started, so we set off in search of snacks. 

Veronica thoroughly enjoyed walking around in her cap and gown. 

We settled on grabbing Cornish pasties, which was quite appropriate considering it would be a while before we were back in Cornwall. 

 

Cycling to Graduation...

Rather than take the train to Penryn, Veronica used the journey from Exeter (where she had moved back to in September 2023) as her first long-distance training ride for her planned cycle ride around England in 2025 to collect data for her PhD. She and Brett covered the 150 miles (241 kilometers) over 4 days, camping along the way. It was exciting to be with her when she was interviewed by BBC Radio Cornwall, her first ever radio interview. 

After breakfast on July 25, they cycled the final hill up to the Penryn campus of the University of Exeter, while Jimmy and I took a bus. Here’s a short summary video that she made of the trip and her blog post with a lot of photos. 

The actual ceremony would take place in Truro, over nine miles away, so Veronica traded her cycling clothes for a beautiful dress and graduation gown...

…and took a bus with other grads to the ceremony.

Due to limited space in the cathedral, tickets were limited to two per grad. We were happy that we both rated the tickets and that the school provided a bus. We had to bring our bags with us as we had a tight schedule to attend the ceremony and then get to the train station for our trip back to London.