What do you mean you've never been to a crayfish party?

As of this past Saturday, the 20th of September, 2008 I can now officially utter the phrase above. I am no longer a crayfish party virgin, like a good percentage of the rest of the world. Apparently, this time of year is crayfish season in Sweden. And what do you do when it's crayfish season? That's right, you have a party! Now, this isn't your average party. This party has hats. Hats with crayfish on them. There's songs too. Songs about crayfish. And bibs. All the bibs have crayfish on them. Are we starting to see a trend within the crayfish party? There's a lot of friggin' crayfish.

The night started out awesomely. I put on my blue and yellow plaid shirt. I had to represent the country where this fine tradition originated. I made it over to my good Swedish friend Martin's flat with the party decorations. We had a crayfish banner and crayfish place mats. We had photocopies of all the crayfish songs. We made Martin's living room into the ultimate crayfish party place. As people started arriving, and putting on their hats you could begin to feel the excitement. The food was brought out and the air was rich with crayfish juice, garlic, and pure, unadulterated joy for the upcoming feast.

The crayfish themselves were kind of creepy. Just like tiny lobsters. They had eyes. stared at you. Always judging. Martin grabbed the first of many crayfish and demonstrated the correct way to gut a crayfish. Each motion made a delicious yet sickening crunching noise. Twist tail. Crunch. Pull tail. Crunch. Insert fork under shell, lift up. Crunch. Remove shell. Crunch crunch. Remove crayfish poo. Squish. Crayfish is now ready for eating. The best way to do it was to put Eyes that it on a piece of bread and smother it in this homemade garlic aioli sauce. It tasted so much better than it sounded. By the end there were heaps of mangled crayfish lying everywhere and everyone reeked of garlic, so you know it was a good party.
I became very fond of the crayfish hats throughout the night. I ended up with two for a good portion of the party. That's me and my friend Karin above, I was rockin' the dual crayfish hats. As the party progressed, if it ever started to die down, one of the Swedes would demand we sing a song. My favorite was called Helan Gar. They tried to translate it and it basically states that if you don't take a shot after singing the song, you're a wuss and no one will like you. That actually seemed to be the gist of all the songs we sang. Hmm...odd. Well let's just say no one was calling me a wuss and everyone loved me by the end of the night. I am a HUGE fan of crayfish parties. SKOAL! (That's 'Cheers!' in Swedish, a helpful word in these situations).

P.S. I won't be posting again until the second week of October because I'm venturing into the Australian outback for a 10 day trip. I'll be sure to post again after that! Adios!