What a peculiar dream! I'm with a bunch of friends in what looks like an old wooden hall with two levels … the upper level is accessible by two curving ramps, one on either side, with raked levels. There are small tables for four people and people are eating or drinking. This seems to be somewhere in South Germany — there are people wearing what look like Bavarian folk costumes. The walls are dark wood with ornate baroque carvings.
We can't find anywhere to sit. We start to go up the right ramp where there are some chairs but no tables. On the upper level which is like a balcony, some people in "peasant costume" beckon to us. They have the only long table where we could sit, but they point beyond where they say there is another table.
We bring our own chairs but the "table" is just a square black log set into the wall. I try to pull it out, thinking it can be pulled out, but it really is just a log. We'd all have to sit in a row facing the wall, trying to put our drinks on the bit of wood that pokes out.
The peasant ladies at the next table laugh and so, "No, no, Sie can bei uns sitten" — a weird mixture of English and German. I see they're finishing, downing their drinks and the table is being cleared. As we move toward them, however, they all stand up … and my friends have all vanished. An oom-pah band is playing and only by the second line do I realize it's the Bayernhymne, the national anthem of the former kingdom of Bavaria. (It's not exactly right, though. The first three notes make it sound eerily like the Nazi anthem, which is not how the Bavarian anthem goes at all. In fact now that I am awake I realize the anthem I heard in my dream was actually a hodgepodge of different hymn-like German pieces.)
Well so I can't get to a seat until it ends. And it ends so I go down to the raked area. My friends are gone, but now, where there weren't any before, there are tables. I am about to sit but suddenly the anthem starts up again — there's another verse. Some of the people start singing along. The words are in a kind of dream-German.
After the second verse no one sits down and I think, O God, a THIRD verse. Instead, in the cleared area below, a scene from a play is being enacted. People are wearing 19th century (or earlier) clothes, and declaiming in a crisp kind of Bühnenaussprache (like an exaggerated stage pronunciation) — even so it's still "dream-German" not comprehensible. The play — maybe it's one of those endless Schiller things — drones on and on but instead of lulling me to sleep, i wakes me up. (Maybe because I'm tired of standing.)