Andy & Biggi graciously, if naively, invited the whole gang to spend President’s Day weekend at their place so Val, the kids and Sport could enjoy seeing some snow. We decided to rent a minivan from Enterprise to keep the wear & tear off of Val’s van. After getting it home Val noticed that the inside of the van was not that clean.  In the process of loading it I found out just how not clean, including a soda bottle, juice box, teething ring, some fries and a couple of chocolate chip cookies.  Enterprise will be hearing from me.

The drive was fairly uneventful, though we did hit traffic near Boston(again for me). Sport was very good in the car, except an incident where he notified us of his need to poop by doing a dead-on impersonation of Chewbacca.  Fortunately we’re conversant in Wookie so we figured it out and stopped to take care of that problem. We got to I-495 at just the wrong time again and lost nearly an hour sitting in very slow-moving Friday rush hour traffic. We got to their house close to 6:30, nearly 8 hours door-to-door.  After some pizza for dinner we settled in for an evening of Rock Band and we managed to break 1,000,000 points on a song for the first time under my profile, unlocking the achievement!

Rock On!

Saturday we had a relaxing morning as everyone recovered from the trip and figured out what we would do for the day.  Val & I decided to drag the kids, somewhat reluctantly on their part, out for some sight seeing as they had never been in that part of the country before while Andy & Biggi would head to the store to prepare for Val’s birthday Schnitzelfest. So we loaded up the rental minivan and after a quick stop at the NH Liquor Store for some schnapps and an 18 year old bottle of scotch (present for a retiring customer) it was off to Maine to check out Nubble Light!

I’d been to Nubble twice before this, but it’s still worth visiting. It’s a beautiful drive in on US 1A along the coast on Cape Neddick to the light even in winter. It was pretty cold out by the Light, so thank you Andy for the use of your jacket! I had managed to forget to pack one. The air temp wasn’t bad but the wind off the water was damn cold.  Still we had fun and the kids actually enjoyed it. Sport REALLY enjoyed it, getting to climb around on the rocks and scare off seagulls.

The Gang

The Poser

Ain't we cute?

Oh look, she's posing again

After we’d wandered around and taken pictures to the point where even the puppy was ready to get the hell out of the wind we retreated to the van.  After a short additional tour North on 1A we headed back to Dover. Val & Biggi spent (wasted?) some more time on Biggi’s online Mahjong game in the ongoing effort to get some “medal” for Biggi and we took it easy before heading to dinner. As it was Valentine’s Day we had decided to have a nice dinner at the restaurant owned by the realtor, Maureen, Andy & Biggi used to buy their home.  It’s called Ship to Shore and is in Newfields, NH. Dinner was excellent as it has been each time we’ve dined there, except of course we had WAY too much food so left with lots of bags of leftovers, and dessert to go!  More mahjong, Rock Band, beer, Mike’s Hard Lemonade finished up another great evening.

Sunday was Val’s birthday and it started with another nice lazy morning, if a bit hungover for some of us (Biggi). Melissa & Biggi were set to have a big day of shopping with their neighbor Amy and Amy’s daughter Sydney.  Amy called to see if they were ready and Biggi, um, generously told her to take her time.  Melissa was of course bangin’ off the chip and ready to go. They did eventually get out the door and Sunday morning returned to quiet, spent mostly again on mahjong! This more or less continued until it was sports time.  The Flyers & NBC gave Val a birthday gift of a network game so we watched the Flyers kick Ranger ass while Val wore her new Mike Richards jersey, which I gave her just before game time.  She had one more gift coming, but it seemed silly to not give that to her to wear for the game.

While we were watching hockey and the ladies were out shopping Andy started into part 1 of being a good bitch to prep for the birthday Schnitzel Fest by beating the holy living hell out of the boneless pork chops to make them patties. Michael helped me kill the time between the Flyers kickin’ ass and Daytona 500 green flag by playing an hour of Rock Band.  Amy’s husband Mark had arrived during the Flyers game along with their son Kyle and this was his first exposure to Rock Band. He of course was as blown away by Michael’s expert level awesomeness as we always are, while I struggle along trying to play hard level bass. If you haven’t guessed what Val was doing at this time you haven’t been paying attention.

Eventually the race got started, the ladies returned victorious from their shopping adventure and serious schnitzel & spaetzle prep got under way. Melissa had done some birthday shopping on behalf of all the kids and got Val a very cool new purse. Just as dinner was ready the race was red-flagged and eventually Matt Kenseth was declared the winner.  The food was awesome as always and after the initial “what the hell is this” reactions from the kids, EVERYBODY dove in and ate far more than they should because you just can’t help yourself! There are of course already plans for a Summer Schnitzel Fest.

As I mentioned previously, it was Val’s birthday and there were a couple of surprises left for her. The first was her birthday cake.  I had joked about putting this on there, but Andy & Biggi decided to go ahead and do it, much to the confusion of the folks at the bakery!

No Dear, you will NEVER live it down!

She got to open her other present from me, a set of Piloti Speedway driving shoes. She’s driven the Z06 now, but you have to have the right gear AND she has heel-toe lessons ahead of her!  There was one last surprise on the docket in honor of the day. Andy had some killer fireworks they’d purchased for New Year’s Eve but hadn’t been able to use because of high winds so he thought it would be a great opportunity.  It wasn’t exactly a windless evening, and it was DAMN cold standing out there watching, but it was calm enough to be safe to set them off.  Turned out to be WELL worth the cold as they’d bought two sets of pre-fused fireworks that ran about two minutes each and they were killer! Getting the sets ready-made is a great idea, you can light one fuse and stand back and enjoy.  They were really good aerial sets as well, going very high, secondary explosions, etc.  Great stuff!  The rest of the evening was pretty low key and we all turned in pretty early as we had to hit the road in the morning.

Andy & Biggi have a guest book that they insist you write in on each visit, and the kids weren’t let off the hook. If you ever visit check out what they wrote, I thought all three wrote great stuff and it was very cool to see that they had enjoyed the visit as much as Val & I had. The rest of the trip was pretty standard fare so I won’t regale you with the thrill of driving a loaded minivan from Dover, NH to Schwenksville, PA.  This has taken far too long for me to finish writing but I do want to send out one more thank you to our very good friends for hosting a spectacular weekend.  We look forward to many more!

So after running some more errands, including stopping at the town hall where Biggi used to live so she could update her address to the US(you cheater!), we arrived at Andreas & Susan’s. I described their home briefly in an earlier post, but I’ll try to fill in some gaps. Basically it’s gardening heaven meets technology heaven, so Biggi & I were both very happy there. After 3 days without Internet I was VERY happy there! We got there late afternoon and made camp out in their Winter Garden (Florida Room) where Andy & I fired up the laptops and got caught up with the world. That took a couple of hours sitting with beers and BS, so by the time the question came up “Pizza or go out?” the very easy answer was “pizza!” I definitely wasn’t out of the relax-mode we had entered at Fritz & Margret’s so that came very naturally.

The rest of the evening stayed pretty low key, with Susan getting home late evening after having to do inventory at work and then their sons Marius and Pascal (forgive any misspellings please!) joined us as well. After drinking those big bottles you see in the pic for a while, sleep couldn’t be denied for long. Andreas & Susan have finished their basement into what is practically a stand-alone home with 2 bedrooms(one of which is Marius’), a full kitchen and ANOTHER enormous bathroom! Andy & Biggi got the bed and I got one of those floor-sofa cushion things, which while a bit on the hard side wasn’t the worst sleeping arrangement I’d had! Unfortunately the combo of the beer and the hard bed led me right into snoring-land and Biggi had to shake me awake to stop me. Fortunately (especially for me, cause she’d have killed me) after that my snoring calmed so we were all able to sleep.

The next day really held more of the same – relaxing, socializing and of course, eating and drinking. They laid out a great breakfast. Not sure if I’ve talked about the typical breakfast, but basically it’s a big platter full of meat, cheese and bread, accompanied by a hard-boiled egg. Breakfast in the states is what Europeans generally would think of as an English Breakfast, eggs, sausage, bacon, etc. I was a bit hesitant about proper etiquette the first couple of times, while it seems obvious and all the folks were very friendly and comfortable it’s still different and you’re outside your comfort zone. However by this point I was a pro, some salami, swiss cheese and a slice of brown bread.. good to go! Andreas wasn’t feeling very well so he spent most of the day sleeping while we enjoyed one of the better days we had while we were in Europe, sitting on the back porch.

Yup, that’s a real bird.

Susan & Andreas are great folks and very gracious hosts. They are originally from the former East Germany and among the last to get out and move to the West before the Berlin Wall fell. As Andy tells the story, so I blame him for any inaccuracy or embellishment, they more or less got to where they were going to live after having left everything behind, only to watch the wall come down on TV that evening. Regardless of their timing it’s obvious that it was the right call as they have made themselves that often-mentioned great home and have 2 great sons. They have done all the work on the house themselves and Andy describes Andreas as something of a mechanical genius. They used to work together where Andreas was Andy’s boss and became great friends. Their accent is quite different from Andy & Biggi’s, though I think it was only obvious to me because I’d been in-country so long. To this American’s ear, it sounds like I think German would sound if spoken by a native Russian speaker. Andy does a GREAT impersonation of Andreas and will often have conversations with him as him. After a couple of beers, well it’s pretty damn funny.

Oh, and I’m remiss for having typed this much without having mentioned the 5th member of the family… Robby. Robby is a daddy’s boy and as he deserves, extremely spoiled. He likes Andy a lot too, but never did really warm up to me, so clearly he has issues with character evaluation. So.. here’s Robby!

A couple of years back, in 2006 I believe it was, Andreas & Susan had taken a safari trip to Kenya and Susan had edited their video into a DVD. Now I know, the joke always is getting stuck looking at people’s vacation pictures, but video of a safari with things you’ve only seen on Discovery Channel is a rather different experience. She really did a great job editing it down to 2 hours. I know the agony Andy went through with the 1000+ pics we took in Vegas, and will go through again with the hundreds from this trip and I’d bet it was harder with the video from the safari. They went to 3 or 4 different “camps” on the trip, taking a plane from one to the other. I use quotes around camp because most of these camps were really small resort areas. One was actually tents, but they were very large rooms created by those tents, hardly roughing it. From those camps they would load up in whatever Land Rover style vehicle was used and head off to safari. And they’re amazing images, straight out of every documentary you’ve ever seen. I started to type about the different animals, but it seems silly and wouldn’t be nearly as interesting as watching the video. Susan did a nice job with the background music too, using tradional music as well as music from Lion King, of course. Two of the interesting non-animal bits of the video were stops in villages. The first was very obviously a tourist trap, complete with a market and high pressure sales. The second was more remote and while you could tell they weren’t the first to stop there, they weren’t an every day occurrence.

The next morning returned us to gray & rainy, facing the long drive to Paris. Speaking of, many thanks to Andreas for printing & laminating Flat Stanley for us. My nephew Matthew is in 2nd grade and their class was doing a Flat Stanley project and so he colored a Flat Stanley up for our trip to Paris, which my sister scanned and e-mailed to me. With the miracle of technology, Flat Stanley appeared in Germany ready for his trip with us to Paris!

So after another good breakfast, we reluctantly loaded up the car and left our great hosts. Thanks again Andreas and Susan, hope some day you decide to take a vacation without your camper and we see you on this side of the Atlantic!

After a great breakfast at Jimmy & Baerbel’s we packed up again and hit the road. We ran a few errands along the way but I’ll be damned if I can remember what they are now. We eventually headed to the home of Biggi’s dad and Margret. They live out in almost literally the middle of nowhere. So much so that on the near-hairpin uphill run just before their village there was construction which is bringing in sewer service. Their home sits at the top of that hill and it’s a wonderful, relaxing place with a great view.

Andy & Biggi have this trip practically down to a science and our stay there was well timed – we needed a break! However we couldn’t get to the resting right away, after a short time to unload the car and say hello we headed back out because Biggi was meeting the girls she used to work with for drinks back in Oehringen.

Andy & I dropped her off and we headed to settle up with Monica from Saturday’s party and grab a bite of dinner. Andy had been wanting me to try currywurst, so we had that for dinner with the requisite fries. Currywurst is a knockwurst sliced up in a tangy tomato sauce with curry. Tasty stuff, even if I did want some of the sauce for spaetzle on my fries! After dinner and a couple of beers Andy & I headed back towards Oehringen for when Biggi called for pick-up. We found a bar that Andy said is one of those places that seems to be a different name every year. It looked very trendy, if small, and had an absolutely AWFUL 2 or 3 piece band playing in the hallway between the lounge where we were and the dining room. You could tell why they were a Monday night act. We weren’t at all surprised by the fact that the supposed-time the girls-night-out was to end came & went, so after finishing up our beers we headed to the bar where she & the girls were and said hello, then ran like the chickens we are away from the table and to the bar. After a bit the party broke up and back to the middle of nowhere we went.

Just a note about how ruthless your author is. I will break an old woman’s hip for a bed. After nearly a week of sleeping on sofas you would too! OK, I didn’t actually break her hip, but Margret’s mom lives with them and a few weeks back she had a fall and is in a rehab facility while she heals. So best wishes to Margret’s mom.. and thanks for the bed!

Tuesday was spent doing absolutely nothing, well expect the eating & drinking and relaxing. Margret made her famous and excellent rabbit for lunch, along with piles of spaetzle and salad and potato salad and that very good Traminer mit LImberger wine (those are the grapes, not the vineyard). DId I mention we ate? It’s a miracle we could get up from the table afterward.

I was in the middle of the latest Dresden novel by Jim Butcher, “Small Favor.” Very enjoyable read. My dad has stalled on the book since proclaiming it to be too preachy (the storyline involves Fallen angels and Church Knights) but I enjoyed it a great deal. I think Bucher has done a great job evolving a character and keeping it interesting, which is not easy to sustain over 10 novels. After polishing that one off I started in on Jennifer Fallon’s “Warlord”, the final novel of her Wolfblade trilogy.
What I did on my European Vacation

Wednesday we decided to actually do something. There is a very cool open-air museum not far from their home, the Hohenloher Freiland Museum(site in German only). It’s a place where they have moved/reubuilt historic homes, inns and farmhouses from the surrounding area. It’s like taking a step back in time walking around there. Though this was the one day of the trip where rain really effected our plans and a good bit of that walking was in the rain. WIthout umbrellas of course, cause we’re so smart.

I’ve had a few people ask me “what’s with the pigs” in the pics in my gallery. Well the pigs are a breed that are unique to the area and were thought to have been extinct. Turned out a couple of farmers had a few last specimens and they were donated to the museum for a breeding program. Follow this link for a Google translated page explaining what they are.

I could ramble on about what we saw, but again, the pictures are far more descriptive than I could ever be. So here’s a link to the section of the gallery with all the pics (around 150!) we took around the museum. The rest of the day was spent very much like the previous, eating & relaxing.

The next morning had an unpleasant surprise… snow! Ya know, it usually doesn’t snow in April in Germany (FO Andy) but since I was there, of course it did. The snow was about 2.5″ deep but didn’t last long because it was too warm. However with Fritz & Margret’s beautiful garden it made for a great photo opp.

One last great meal from Margret and it was time to leave our peaceful respite. Thanks so much to Fritz & Margret, you have a wonderful home and I am very grateful you allowed me to be your guest!

Next, a return to civilization, complete with wireless broadband!

Lunch was at a nearby winery and farm that has a restaurant and since our car was the only one big enough for 5 of us we got to drive. I should say I got to drive, because Andy was in no condition to drive. This was rather amusing because it was quite clear Peter was very nervous having the American driving and he doesn’t speak a word of English. So in addition to pointing which turn or exit from a traffic circle I needed to take I got advice on when to slow down, how to park, etc. His hand gestures became a running joke any time we were in the car from then on. We got to the winery with no trouble however. They have an old train car that if you can believe the signs was from the Orient Express and we got a table in that train car. It was a very nice place, wine was pretty good and the food was excellent. After some brautwurst, kraut and spaetzle I was feeling much more human and I think Andy could actually begin to form sentences.

After lunch we drove up onto the hillside to where they keep steer to take some photos. The steer and the stench were quite impressive, as was the view, gorgeous area.

From there it was time to go get our luggage and say our goodbyes to Cristel and Peter and head to Jimmy & Baerbel’s. Their house is really cool. It’s an older home perched on the side of a hill surrounded by vineyards. They have done an amazing job renovating the interior. Baerbel is very good with tile and the whole place has great tile accents. It’s a combination of old farmhouse with a southwestern flair. They also have 7 cats, 4 of which are kittens, of which they will be keeping 1. Anyone that thinks Serena is spoiled needs to check out this picture.

We had a quieter, less crowded version of the previous evening’s party. They cooked up some really tasty Thai food and Jimmy used a… special butter to prepare some of it that made for a rather, shall we say, mellow evening. Their friends Michael and his wife and kids, Joerg & Danni and of course Reddy were there as well. There was also another guy there and guess what, I don’t remember his name. But he didn’t have much to say in German and didn’t speak any English so that’s not a surprise.

Danni & Joerg brought the photo book of our Vegas trip that Andy & Biggi had given them for Christmas and it was REALLY nice. Hard-bound and nicely printed it makes for a great way to remember a trip like that. Late in the evening as the Thai food had REALLY set in they wanted us to sign the book… oh boy. I looked through the book again, had a couple of moments of inspiration and clarity and I think I managed to write something decent. Andy however pretty much just copied what Biggi said.. he had way more Thai food than I did!

Jimmy’s wife Baerbel understands and can speak English, but she was yet another one that clammed up around me, afraid to say the wrong thing. However… once the sparkling wine was flowing it was all you could do to get a word in edgewise! I went through the Vegas photo book with her and quickly determined there’s not a chance in hell she would go to the top of Stratosphere or stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon. It was a lot of fun talking to her, but at breakfast the next day she was English-free again.

Late in the evening I got to talking with Reddy. The man has been a lot of places I would never want to go in the course of doing his job, which I didn’t really ever catch what it was, other than working on equipment. He’s something of a mechanical genius so his skills are in demand where he works and they wind up sending him places like Libya, where he winds up telling stores that sound like they’re straight out of the movies. Did I mention the stories never end? At two or three points I could have sworn he was getting ready to leave, and then 30 minutes later you realize, nope, he’s not leaving. This apparently is typical Reddy and it was just my turn. He’s a cool guy and the stories are amazing.. wish I could remember them but at that point in the evening…nope, no way!

At the very end of the evening Jimmy laid out a late night snack spread that I gotta tell ya, the Germans kick our asses when it comes to this shit. A big plate of cheese, toasted bread, all sorts of meats and killer mustard. I made quite a fuss over one mustard in particular and the next morning Jimmy gifted me with a tube of it. Did I mention he’s a great guy? Can’t wait to make some brats at home and open that up.

So another set of thanks to generous and great hosts and a few pics of the evening to close this one out.

Looking out from their smoking porch

Now we’ve all been to parties where we didn’t know a lot of folks so take that and add in that most of the guests don’t speak a word of English…. this is not a complaint, simply an explanation of how very little I’ll be able to share relative to what happened in the evening! I met a LOT of people and I quickly realized that suddenly there were faces to go with the names in the drinking stories I’ve been hearing for nearly 4 years now. That was very entertaining in and of itself though right now the names are all again blurred in my brain. Two gentlemen who were hard to forget (it helped that I saw them again the next day) were Jimmy & Reddy. Jimmy is a BIG man, when he came into the pub he literally picked up both Biggi & Andy. While not at the same time I wouldn’t doubt for a moment he COULD! He’s a great guy, as nice as he is large and was wearing this cape-like leather coat and a floppy leather hat to match… I couldn’t help but think GANDALF! Reddy is a very different kind of guy. His real name is Dirk, but they call him Reddy because of his red hair. I suspect from the stories I’ve heard that in addition to that it’s because you have to be ready for him to show up at any moment. At this particular moment when he showed up, it was with his radio controlled helicopter. The man is damned good at flying the thing.

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The birthday party proceeded as you would expect – eating lots of food, drinking lots of beer, etc. Our friends Danni and Joerg who I’ve gotten to know quite well over the last couple of years were there and did an excellent job entertaining the American. They introduced me to a friend of theirs, Tina, who had to endure my company as well. If I got the story straight, Danni broke Tina’s shoulder so she could ride her horse while Tina recovered. Did I get that right Danni?

It was getting late and the non-party crowd was getting antsy, so things moved on to the happy birthday portion of the evening. One of their many friends had gotten extremely creative with ways to present monetary gifts to the birthday boy & girl. For Biggi they had taken a small window box, surrounded it with dirt, added some plants, etc and placed the money folks had gifted inside her “greenhouse” to help fund the real one in New Hampshire. Andy and his wife are remodeling their kitchen, so for him it was a miniature kitchen. Kudos to Birgit and her daughters for an outstanding effort!

Just before these presents were presented Birgit’s daughters sang a couple of songs for us. The first one they did was called “Denglish” and was hysterical, even if you only knew English. It’s a song about how English words are creeping into German (Deutsch, hence Denglish). I took a video of them singing the whole thing, but it weighs in at 340MB so I’ll have to wait until I’m home to get that in some presentable format.

*UPDATE 4-25-2008* The video is now in a presentable format!

After that and dessert the parents and other family members headed home and the partying got serious. Around midnight I took a look at Andy and decided that I’d let the guy who was paying for a bunch of the party enjoy himself so I stopped drinking. I was reminded far too late in the evening that cabs are REALLY quick & easy to get in Germany (damn US thinking) and I could have kept at it too, but considering the amount of drinking we’ve been doing on this trip it wasn’t an awful idea to take it easy for one evening. Especially since the evening didn’t end until 4:00am and we were having lunch with Biggi’s mom and Peter the next day and they’re early risers! The music got loud, the beer, sparkling wine and schnapps were flowing and it was a great party.

A great party for great friend, as it should be. And yes, I drove us home sober & safe. Though I’m not sure Cristel’s neighbors will ever forgive us the laughter at 4:00am when Andy realized the last spoon of dessert he grabbed on the way out the door landed more on the top of his shoe than in his mouth.

Happy Birthday Biggi!!

After that we were off for another kind of dental work, visiting Andy’s dad. His mom died a number of years ago and his dad has never really recovered from that, so the visits are difficult. His dad however does make a mean goulash so the visit was highlighted with a very good lunch.

When we finished the visit we went to go see the site where Danni & Joerg’s new home is being built. Right now it’s just a big hole in the ground so it was of course christened their Grand Canyon.

We stopped by at the house of friends of thiers, Sabini and Werner, but Werner was on a business trip in London and Sabini had her hands full with their two young, sick kids. We didn’t stay long!

From there we decided to head to a famous schnitzel place for some dinner called Schnitzel Charly. Their specialty is of course, schnitzel so that’s what we ordered, with salad and spaetzle. We ordered the “half” schnitzel fortunately, because even THAT was almost big enough to cover the plate. It was of course superb. The check was amusing because the half schnitzels are referred to as “KINDER.” I think we got robbed, if we were having the happy meal we should have gotten a toy!

After stuffing ourselves silly on the schnitzel we were feeling the effects of the week and the previous evening’s wine, so we decided to just make a stop at the restaurant where Biggi’s party would be the next day and then head home. The stop at Moni’s let us know that all we needed to do was show up, so we had a pils, talked for a bit and then headed home. Back at Cristel’s flat we took it easy and got to bed at a decent hour for a change.

I was up early on Saturday to give “Steve Germany” from the Corvette Forum a call. I’ve known Steve via the forum for a couple of years now and when I mentioned to him a couple of months back that I would be in the area he very generously offered the opportunity to drive his C6. I had driven the previous day to get a feel for the street signs and the rules of the road, which differ in a few very important ways from the US, so I fired up the flame-throwing 1.9L turbo diesel in our Opel Zafira, put Steve’s address in Susie the Garmin NuVi and off I went. It’s been a long time, probably since I drove in Ireland & England in ’97, since I had to pay that much attention while driving. Everything is just different enough that you can’t just put your mind on automatic. Instead of being a constant speed, the autobahn changes frequently, going from 100 kph to 120 and if you’re in an area rural enough removing the speed limit altogether. Head on a swivel and if you venture into the far left lane don’t hang out long or you’ll get run over!

So anyway, I arrived at Steve’s right on time and after a short while we headed out with me behind the wheel of Steve’s ’05 coupe. The first leg of our trip was to meet up with his wife Shawni (sp?) for lunch. We went to a shooting range which apparently is where all the local cops and hunters go. It was of course tucked away back in the woods, but had good food (a different style of schnitzel, this one pan fried instead of deep fried) and an access road where you have to watch out for frogs horny during their mating season. This pic’s for you, Mr Hall:

After lunch Shawni headed out for some shopping and Steve & I headed out for a drive into the Black Forest. The roads through there are great and it’s easy to see why they’re very popular for motorcyclists. We took a ton of pics and I’ll post a couple of them here, but if you want to see the rest of them click this link.

We made a couple of stops along the way, including a small walled town, the name of which of course I cannot remember. We also made a stop on the far side of an old one lane bridge that has god-awful lines of sight. I took a few pics and just as I decided to run some video the inevitable happened. As soon as I get the vid uploaded to Google I’ll add it to this post. Here are a few of the pics.

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On returning from our drive Steve took me for a ride in his other toy, a Porsche 996 4S. I’d never been in a Porsche before so it was an interesting ride. Very different sound & feel to the Vette. Steve is likely going to sell his Vette because he just doesn’t drive it enough and the Porsche is better suited to the roads here. I can’t argue the point, with the towns roads the way they are you really can’t even wind out 2nd let alone 3rd before you’re going too fast. The Porsche “lets you use all the engine” because it’s a 6 cylinder at 320hp. After that ride it really was pretty obvious what he was talking about. So to finish this point I’ll put a pic or 2 of his 996 up and say thanks Steve, it was a great afternoon!

Tuesday morning we headed to DYNOS where we again met with Klaus-Peter. After a coffee and a brief meeting we drove over to the production building and toured it. Nothing much had changed to my eye since 2000, though I’m sure there are tons of details that have changed. But making Vulcanized Fibre hasn’t changed much in 100 years, you take giant rolls of paper, feed the number of plys required to get the resulting thickness you’re aiming for, dip them in a really nasty Zinc Chloride acid bath and then rinse it for hundreds of linear meters of rollers. Andy & Biggi seemed to enjoy the tour, though that wasn’t unexpected from Andy since he’s a guy and it’s giant machinery making stuff(insert Tim Taylor grunt). I was worried about Biggi being bored to tears but it worked out OK.

After the tour we hit to road South toward Öhringen. We started off on the autobahn (most Americans think of “The Autobahn” as a specific road, but really it’s just German for “highway”) but after a bit we turned off to side roads and drove into Heidelberg. It’s a beautiful old city, though we didn’t have time to do anything in the actual city aside from drive through it. We did drive up a winding road to the castle and walked around snapping tons of pictures. The most amazing bit of the castle is actually a ruin. One of the typical tower cylinders you see had split almost in half down it’s height, with the outside part mostly just sliding down do the ground to that it still rests against the castle. It’s sort of like opening a dollhouse where you can look inside. I could try to describe more, but picture being worth more words than even I am able to type (ok, more than YOU are willing to read) just click the photo gallery link and you’ll find tons of pics.

We stayed off the autobahn for the rest of the trip, winding along the river Neckar. It’s a gorgeous ride that Andy & Biggi have done tons of times on motorcycles and even in a Volkswagen bus a time or two. You pass though village after village built into the hills on either side of the river, with the occasional castle-like villa perched hillside from time-to-time. They’re the kind of roads I love to take the Vette out on(cue the foreshadowing music).

We arrived in Öhringen at Cristel’s (Biggi’s mom) around 5:00pm where we were greeted with hugs(Cristel), handshakes (Peter, her figure-out-a-better-word-for-significant-other-someday because boyfriend sounds stupid for adults) and of course food. We had a hotdog-like sausage the name of which I can’t recall <begin recurring theme of trip> as well as something that sounds like “flysalad” when you hear it, but is a sort of coleslaw. Good pretzels and mustard to go with. The rest of the evening is spent having some drinks and waiting for midnight and therefore Biggi’s birthday to arrive. They had no beer when we got there, but Andy made a comment to me in English about the next day making sure we had some GOOD beer that was SUPPOSED to be an aside, however Peter of the ultra-sharp hearing ventured out to the store and soon we were drinking an excellent Pils called Rothaus, aka Roadhouse. Good stuff, nice hoppy bite but a good medium lager-style base and WAY too easy to drink. Andy & I made a dent in the case the the case dented back. All in all a good evening. Some inevitable downtime for me as neither Cristel nor Peter speak English, but they had a lot of catching up to do and it’s not their fault that I don’t speak German, certainly not “A Good German” like Biggi anyway. Midnight came, hugs & kisses and we were all ready for bed. We were staying at Cristel’s through Sunday so she & Peter packed up and headed to his place.

Wednesday was of course Biggi’s birthday and with the big party on Saturday she needed to get to the hairdresser. This isn’t any old trip to the hairdresser of course, this is a 4+ hour affair full of coffee, facials, hand jobs rubs and girl talk at the shop run by her good friend Elke. Andy dropped her off in the morning and he & I ran some errands and had a beer. We went to pick her up and an hour or so later (it will only be 20 minutes) I observed that I’m pretty sure the scissors didn’t move unless either Biggi’s or Elke’s mouth were moving. This earned me dirty looks and I’m sure a few words equally pleasant that I blissfully couldn’t understand. And of course once she was finished, we had to circle back to pick up the set of pictures Andy had printed out as a “here’s the house we bought in New Hampshire” report to show folks. Cue that damned foreshadowing music again.

Later that evening we were to have dinner with her parents and their respective partners. First was some coffee and wine at Cristel’s, where it came to my attention that the grit I had discovered in my mouth after lunch (German sandwich equivalent of a hotdog I’m told, again, I forget the name of that too) was not from the bones of some animal I’d probably be happier not identifying, but in fact from a filling which was falling out of one of my teeth. It didn’t hurt at this point, but since it seemed like I had the Grand Canyon yawning in one of my molars I decided it would be wise to call the dentist and see if I could get an appointment on Friday when Biggi had one already scheduled. Dinner was at a hotel restaurant called I believe The Rose and was excellent. Andy, Biggi & I did our own sort of smorgasbord ordering 3 different dishes and passing them around. One was a sirloin covered in a brown sauce with grilled onions, one was vension filet in a gravy and the last a pork tenderloin in a mushroom in a Bernaise sauce. All were delicious and accompanied by a bottle of local wine that was light but very nice. This of course followed by the German variant of a banana split, which instead of various toppings involves simple a banana crème liqueur sauce and a few waffle wafers to go with the ice cream and banana. I could have cared less about the ice cream after a few bites, the wafers with the sauce had my undivided attention. Another pleasant evening spent, and compared to the one to come next a very early evening! Nah, no foreshadowing here, there was a party on Thursday and we drank a lot and were out late, that’s not worth a soundtrack.

On Thursday morning Biggi’s mom joined us to do some shopping in Öringhen, which is again another very pretty German town. The towns & villages here are very old of course and so they have narrow streets and are frequently restricted to foot traffic only so it’s sort of an outdoor mall, only much more relaxed. The shopping was mostly to stock up on things they can’t buy in the US but we did stop so that my style guru Biggi could advise me on a new pair of sunglasses at her favorite eyeglass store. It’s owned & operated by a husband/wife/daughter team and it doesn’t take long to figure out why Biggi likes it there. She and the wife soon had me trying on all sorts of glasses and I think the point where they would ask me to actually look in the mirror was really just ego salve for me. However I did lay down the law at the Elvis glasses! Wound up with a very nice new pair of RayBans and even with the god-awful exchange rate they really weren’t more than I would have paid in the states, especially after I sent Andy back the next day to get me a receipt that showed the VAT which I can get back at the airport in Paris(19%).

We stopped at a Turkish place to grab a bite for lunch and indulge in what seems to be the German equivalent of a cheesesteak, which they call a Kabob. It’s a lot like a Gyro, with roasted lamb(I think), lettuce, tomato and some sort of sauce. Whatever the hell it is it’s DAMNED tasty. Andy ordered his and mine “schauft”, which basically means they throw a pile of curry on it. I tried the traditional Turkish drink that goes with it called Ayran (pronounced Iron) which is a salty yogurt drink, but even with the curry it was too salty for my taste.

After our shopping & lunch Biggi needed to get to a doctor’s appointment so Andy & I took advantage of the time to hunt down some internet access! A very good friend of Andy’s (former boss) and his wife have this great house and importantly for us that day even though they weren’t home they had a wireless router. Andy called Andreas (yes, another Andy) and he was kind enough to provide his password for access so we drove over and sat on their back porch (Tahiti as Joe described it) and leeched bandwidth for a couple of hours. This man Andreas is my new hero, he called his teenage son Marius and sent him home to “make sure those 2 guys have beer.” We of course had brought a few of our own, but they didn’t last and Marius’ presence was deeply appreciated.

Andreas and Susan’s house is great. The bathroom is a design of pure genius. It is 4x larger than any bathroom I’ve seen outside the US (aside from perhaps Surender’s “throne” room in India) with a GREAT triangular Jacuzzi tub and a killer shower stall complete with one of the latest shower towers with heads for back massage. Did I mention we’re staying there next week? Wireless broadband, a great bathroom and lots of beer, they’ll lucky to get rid of me. After Biggi finished at the doctor she joined us there so we moved from the back porch to a sunroom out front that is just packed with plants, as well as comfy chairs and a table. Andreas came home while we were still there so we hung out for a bit while I finished burning up his bandwidth uploading pics, checking e-mails, etc. I look very much forward to our return to their home.

We headed to Elke’s birthday party, which was held at her home. Her husband Thomas is an architect and boy does it show. The house is something straight out of a magazine. Ultra modern, lots of angles, very minimalist, nothing on the walls and designed down to every last detail. And of course since it’s a house it’s a never ending project. It’s cool in the extreme, not a place I would want to live in, but cool in the extreme. Aside from the food the party would be easily recognizable as any small birthday gathering in the US – a collection of family, close friends and 1 foreigner. OK, so except that last bit recognizable. But the food was very good so it made up for my presence. A few of the people invited spoke English so I wasn’t completely dependent on Andy & Biggi for the evening. Elke understands English but is reluctant to attempt to speak it. This has turned out to be very common, and considering the smattering of German I know I can completely relate, you are always a bit hesitant that you will say the wrong thing. Thomas was more willing to try to speak English than his wife, and with some Weiss beer acting as a social lubricant was more and more likely to do so as the evening wore on. I also spent some time chatting with their friend Kristen (no clue about the spelling here) and her husband-to-be. Pardon my being so male as to remember the hot brunette’s name while forgetting the guy’s. Names, be they people or towns, seem to be the hardest thing to get to stick in your memory. Strange as it may sound, for people’s names I generally do better if I try to get the American/Britisth version of the name (when there is one) in my head, then attempt to apply the correct pronunciation.

So anyway, it was a good evening and around midnight seemed to be winding down. I had gone easy with beer during the evening so that Andy could enjoy the party so it felt like after a near-week of pretty steady partying I was finally going to have an easy evening. This however was not to be. During the course of a conversation earlier in the evening Andy had mentioned to Thomas that I liked red wine. So at midnight Thomas asks me if I like red wine, I of course say yes, which also inevitably leads to Thomas dashing out of the room to grab a bottle. Thomas clearly enjoys a good bottle of wine and was far too enthusiastic about it to dare say no, so after the 2^nd glass when I tried to say “hey I gotta drive” I was told in no uncertain terms that there’s a reason taxis exist. They’re far easier to get here as well, so we moved on to plan B, I was NOT driving home. Which was a good thing, after two more bottles of red(that’s 3 bottles for those of you playing at home).

The region is very much a wine region, mostly with a grape that tastes to me like Pinot Noir. Everywhere you drive you see vines in the hills. The tendency is toward light drinking wines, but Thomas opened up a reserve bottle first and it was very good. The second he opened was a lighter red more typical of the region. Compared to what I had tried previously of that variety it was good, but I definitely prefer heavier, drier reds. The third and last bottle he opened was a 2004 reserve and that was my favorite of the bunch. I wish I could remember the names and share, but the language barrier and aforementioned names issue makes that impossible. Suffice it to say, 3:00am arrived and found us getting out of a taxi at Cristel’s flat, facing dentist appointments in the morning. But still well worth it. Thank you Thomas for sharing some of the best bottles from your stock and for being willing to try speaking English. You’re much better at it than you think you are and I had a great evening. I hope someday I get an opportunity to return the favor.

Elke & Biggi, 20 years later, still hot!

Thomas, Wine Afficiando

And since this post started with a path to hell reference, I’ll end it on Thursday instead of Friday, as I intended…

So we were somewhere in Amsterdam when last we met, dear reader (not you Jim, the other readers, both of them). All 3 of us slept very late and after waking up a bit Biggi declared she wanted breakfast, even though it was 1:00pm by the time we were motivated enough to leave the room. Andy hunted up a place to aim towards on Google and off we went. Our hotel was right by Centraal Station which is quite a building, so we wandered across the street in that direction, took some pics and worked our way towards our destination. We didn’t make it to that restaurant because Biggi was HUNGRY and our walk took us right by a place the declared breakfast all day, bingo! An excellent call it turned out to be as well. Not only was the food good, but the coffee was superb.

After the refueling stop was finished we wandered along and through some of the many shops that line the streets. We stopped in the central plaza in town where there were a number of street performers, including a Darth Vader I had to get a picture of for Aidan & Owen. Then we headed into Madame Tussaud’s. The wax figures were the usual mix of local figures who you would never know unless you were a local and movie & music celebrities. Most of the statues were pretty good, some were very good, some just made you say “hmmmmm.” They had a Pirates of the Caribbean exhibit which included a small “house of horror” setup with live actors. There were a group of young girls behind us which made this a great deal of fun as the provided an excellent scream-track. Biggi added her own music to the mix when the actor who was jailed like Jack Sparrow aboard the Black Pearl started making grabs for us. Overall it was an overpriced but fun way to spend an hour or so.

We did some more shopping & touring the remainder of the daylight hours, visiting a couple of old haunts of Andy’s. One of them was a pub called Black & White, or had been called that anyway. It obviously had changed ownership and shifted focus from coffee shop/pub to café. The other haunt was much more successful and where we stopped for dinner, an Italian restaurant that doesn’t look like much but serves very good food for Amsterdam-reasonable prices. After walking all afternoon we decided to ride the trolley back to Centraal Station and stop at the hotel before we went out into the Red Light District.

Our first stop in the District was a Sex Museum. It was a pretty low-rent display of cultural statues, carvings, old dirty pictures, etc and a porno cartoon reel looping on one of the levels. As entertainment goes it was less than Madame Tussaud’s, but the price was far more reasonable.

Biggi again ran out of steam early and after dropping her off at the hotel Andy & I did some window shopping (amazing variety for sale!) and eventually settled into a pub called Excalibur. It was Sunday evening so the place wasn’t exactly jumping but there was still some good people watching and our body clocks seemed to be still set somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic so we were still there at last call, 12:30. After finishing our last beer we wandered around a bit looking to see if there were anywhere to get a nightcap, but the only kind available seemed to be of the windowed-variety, for which we had many offers. They have these outdoor urinals spread throughout the district which is pure genius. New Orleans would smell SO much better if US citizens weren’t wound quite so tight. There were 2 types, a newer plastic variety that looks like one of those carousels we had in playgrounds as kids, only tall in the center where you were out in the open, but your private bits remained private. Getting back to the events of that moment, Andy & I had stopped at one of the older style, which only serves 1 at a time and is a sort of spiraled vented metal stand. While waiting for each other to finish, a particularly determined lady of the Orient nearly broke the glass on her door in an effort to attract our… money. Eventually I gave the poor girl the universal wave for “fuggetabout it” and she took the hint. The best one though was actually as we wound our way back to the hotel. The farther you go from the main canal that is the district the quality of the merchandise fades and this woman of dubious quality cracked her door open to express her never-ending devotion to both of us. While flattered, certainly, Andy & I chose not to inflict any more heartbreak on the poor dear and simply yelled “we love you too.”

Monday morning started late for us and as we woke up, cleaned up and packed up barely in time to check out by noon, we asked the concierge to hold our bags while we went back for more of that excellent coffee. Not only were they happy to do that (for the price, they damn well better be!) they put the bags IN the car so that when it rose up the elevator from the garage we were ready to hit the road to Cologne.

We got ourselves to the Holiday inn in Cologne and took advantage of what has turned out to be scarce broadband since to catch up on some e-mails and IMs before meeting Klaus-Peter from DYNOS for dinner. Biggi was in the mood for some “good German food” so he took us into downtown Cologne. We had some daylight left and since Andy & Biggi had never been inside the Cathedral we took advantage of the opportunity. For dinner we went to a kind of Hofbrauhaus for the Früh brand of Kölsch beer(a very light lager which Andy says it not actually beer). Good food, beer(it’s not great beer, but very drinkable, no matter how much Andy whines about it) and a great waiter, when the man said “Jawoll” the walls practically rattled. I chose not to have my dad’s favorite “Hamchen” (bone-in chunk of roasted pork) and opted for the bratwurst, a damned fine choice as far as I was concerned. The waiter insisted that Biggi finish her strudel before he would remove the plate and give us the check. It was fine by Andy & me as he was fine with continuing to bring us fresh .2L glasses of Kölsch.

After Klaus-Peter dropped us off (thanks for dinner!) at the hotel we went into the hotel bar to have another beer or two before turning in. Köln was playing Mönchengladbach in what was reportedly a very important game of football so of course that was the focus of the bar. Your focus may be off after reading that city name, but just say “squirrel” instead and it’s a lot easier, trust me. And so after over 1200 words, according to Microsoft, we finally come back to the title of this posting. After switching back & forth all night from English to German and back, Biggi fumbled a word or two trying to relay something to the bartender. The gentleman in question spoke fine German, though obviously from a Middle Eastern country originally. So after listening in on me giving Biggi a hard time about HER German, the bartender came to her defense while at the same time not recognizing she was in fact German and told her, in English……

“You speak a good German!”

The travel went about as well as one can hope for, <snob>at least when flying coach</snob>. It did start with Andy sending a nasty e-mail to Ranjan because AGAIN the boy or his pet travel agent didn’t listen and we wound up with 3 of the 4 sets in the middle instead of having a window seat. Air France service was pretty good and the food was actually edible. Andy managed to get some sleep but Biggi didn’t sleep at all and I managed about 45 minutes or so at the end of the flight. I made up for the lack of plane-sleeping in the car, managing darned near 4 hours of sleep on the 5 hour ride from Paris to Amsterdam. Our chariot is an Opel Zafira, a decent if boring minivan-esque machine. We made it to Amsterdam with a minimum of traffic & fuss, not that I really remember much of it. Having a car in Amsterdam is not at all cheap, 47E per day!

Amsterdam itself is of course a pretty cool place. There are bicycles everywhere and when walking around you need to keep your head on a swivel so as not to get run down. You notice quickly that the bicycles are all pretty old and crappy. Andy & Biggi tell me this is because there is a very active bicycle stealing ring in the city so there’s no point in owning a nice one when it will just be stolen anyway. After a short time in our room at the NH Barbizon Palace we took a walk around the city a bit and had some Chinese food for dinner at a completely forgettable restaurant. Biggi decided that she had been awake long enough and so we headed back to the hotel to drop her off, comfy in bed with the TV and a Corona. Andy & I headed back out.

Our first stop was at a bar called Rock Planet, a small, college-bar sort of take on a Hard Rock. Still a cool place with lots of rock memorabilia on the walls, cold beer and great rock music playing really loud. And of course a coffee shop next door, which helped take the edge off us and the loud music. Deciding after 2 Grolsch that we should probably do some walking while we were still able, we headed out to walk around the red light district. It was still on the early side so things were just starting to warm up, but the ladies were already in their windows for your shopping pleasure. The majority of the “windows” are actually doors to small efficiency hotel-room sorts of setups. While most folks would picture a fairly wild party area, it’s actually a fairly typical European shopping style of place. Hard to describe but I think the best I’ve come up with yet is New Orleans, only stoned.

We kept walking around looking for a likely place to have a couple of pints and wound up just outside the touristy area. The bar looked fairly typical at first glance, but 1/2 way through our first bier it became obvious that we were not from an island that spoke a language with a heavy French influence, and they were. We hung around for one more beer cause hey, 4E for a 1/2 liter is cheap in Amsterdam, then we moved on.

We wound up at the Cafe Trinity or some such, after I thought Andy was done but he found a 3rd wind as we were walking back to the hotel. This place was in the red light district, if barely, but had good energy and Grolsch on tap. Plus the 3 barmaids were a lovely mix of dark, mocha and “holy crap girl you need to at least look at the sun every so often.” But still, all nice to look at, and very nice to chat with as well. Which Andy got to do more of, because a couple of young Brits wandered in and after amusing one of the barmaids when I told the one that turned out to be Gus that if he didn’t want to pay 5E for a Bud then he should stay home and drink instead of going out in Amsterdam. The other one turned out to be Sam, who almost immediately pushed my American buttons by starting in on a rant about how few Americans have passports. Well we had a good drunken conversation, Andy kept chatting up the barmaids (at which point I wondered aloud to him how the married guy wound up talking to the lovelies while I was talking to 2 blokes from Manchester – he reminded that’s cause I’m a dumbass, point to Andy) and all-in-all had a good time.

We left Cafe Trinity and discovered Biggi still awake! Though she claimed to have just re-awakened and taken an Ambien to make sure it was the last time. Before long we were all 3 asleep and we’ll leave Day 2 for the next post….