Trip to Jerusalem

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Children and adults on the trip

The trip to Jerusalem or trip to Rome is a board game with any number of players that determines a single winner; it can also be operated as a children's game . In eastern Germany the game also will chair dance , Stuhlpolonaise or chair Polka called in Austria and Switzerland, the term chair dance in use, in English musical chairs . The game can also be used as a counting rhyme .

Course of the game

You arrange chairs in a circle, one chair less than participants. These also line up in a circle. As soon as the game master starts the music, everyone has to move in a circle around the chairs. The game master stops the music at an arbitrary time; then each participant must try to sit down on an empty chair as quickly as possible; at the end there is always one participant standing and eliminated.

Now a chair is removed and the remaining participants determine another loser through the music-controlled running and stopping.

The game is repeated until there are only one chair and two participants left in the last round; whoever wins this is the winner of the entire game.

variants

  • Fruit salad , also known as an orchard , is a variant of the game described above. As many participants as possible sit in a circle on chairs. Each player is given a fruit name , only a few different ones , such as four or five, are used. The player in the middle, who has no more space because there is one seat less than participants, now prepares the fruit salad by indicating which ingredients he prefers. For example, he says: I'll make a fruit salad out of apples and pears and grapes. Now all of the mentioned types of fruit have to swap places, whereby the preparer has to quickly find a chair. Whoever is left can now make a fruit salad. So that no place is found on purpose, one can introduce as a rule that whoever has been in the middle three times is left with rotten fruit . Of course there is also one less chair.
  • When dancing a chair with couples, one couple always occupies the chair (partner on the lap). Otherwise, similar rules apply as for the trip to Jerusalem .
  • Another option is the trip to Jericho . The principle is similar to the trip to Jerusalem. The difference: as soon as a chair is taken away, all participants have to try to stand on the remaining chairs together. The interesting thing about this version is that the cooperation of all players is necessary. The aim is to have all participants in one chair, if possible.

origin

The origin of the name is unclear. Some suspect it came from trips to Jerusalem at the time of the loss-making crusades , others suspect it originated in the time of the Zionist migration to Palestine and the limited space on the emigration ships .

The Strategikon des Maurikios , a military manual of the Byzantine emperor and general Maurikios from the 6th century, offers another explanation of the origin of the game : It is a method of identifying enemy spies in your own ranks. When a trumpet signal sounds, all soldiers and civilian escort teams have to go to their sleeping place immediately. The opposing spies then have only two options: Either they try to stay in a tent or they stay outside the tents - in both cases they are exposed as strangers. Ironically, in the first Asterix volume, Asterix the Gaul, a travel-to-Rome game is used for the opposite purpose: since there is no volunteer to scout out the Gaulish village, Caligula Minus is selected as a Roman spy using this method.

Name of the game in different countries

The game is spread and known all over the world. In Denmark, the Netherlands and Portugal, in addition to the trip to Jerusalem , the names chair dance , chair polonaise or dancing chairs (literal translations) have become commonplace. In Ireland, England, France, Greece, Italy, Russia, Israel, the USA and Thailand, this is called musical chairs . Sweden's players refer to the sea in their naming: there it is called stormy seas . In Romania the game is called a little bird looking for your nest , while in the Philippines it is called a trip to Jerusalem just like in Germany .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Those with the chairs dance WELT AM SONNTAG, December 7, 2003.
  2. Maurice's Strategikon: Handbook of Byzantine Military Strategy , translated by George T. Dennis, University of Philadelphia Press, 1984, p. 105 .