Tippling The White Fantastic

My holiday with my friend Graham from Katoomba in the Blue Mountains was a lot of fun and we certainly knocked up some miles both on foot and by car, train and boat. For the first 2 days we looked around the local area of Darmstadt, Bad Konig and Michelstadt. It took quite some perserverence given the heavy rain and the end of both days saw me stuffing my shoes with news paper to try and dry them.

On the Wednesday we went to Heidelberg for the ubiquitous tour of the castle and the viewing of its 220,000 litre wine barrel as well as taking the funicular rail to the top of the mountain to the Konigstuhl (Kings Seat) and then trudging back down the mountain to the city.

We left on Thursday for a main driving tour and drove north to Bingen where Graham and I jumped on one of the Rhine River cruises to Koblenz for a 2.5 hour cruise past some 50 odd castles, set amongst picturesque vineyards whilst Bettina took the car on ahead to meet us at the other end. The weather had really picked up by then so it was a magic little journey. At Koblenz where the Rhine and the Moselle Rivers meet (the Deutsch Ecke)we spent some time looking around at the magnificent statues and the fabulous old buildings of the town centre before heading off down the Moselle for the next 3 days.

We managed to score overnight appartments on most nights with balconies over looking the Moselle from where we could sip a couple of bottles of great wine and snack on cheese before heading out for dinner and more sampling of the local grape juice. On 2 evenings (after Graham and Bettina had retired for the evening) I got to meet the wine makers at 2 of the places we stayed and over long discussions on wine and viticulture styles I managed to get beautifully inebriated.



The white wines offered along the Moselle are truly magnificent with the area known as Urziger Wurzgarten getting my vote for best wine of the trip. Their Rivaner and dry Moselle were exceptional. Vineyards in this region depending on who you talk to are incredibly steep with gradients between 68-72 degrees. The grapes are harvested by a series of cable drawn pulley cars that run up the slopes between the rows of vines. Tough, hard, unrelenting work for anyone but the end result speaks for itself. Dr.Loosen 2003 Urziger Wurgarten Auslese, a very fine wine from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer region is also to be found here. The meals served everywhere enroute were fantastic I have certainly put on a bit of weight of the last 16 days.

We eventually ended up in Trier for a look around before drifting across into Luxemburg for a short visit and then heading to Thionville in France for an evening. After that it was off to Colmar in the Alsace via Saint-Die (notable for its church and museum) for 2 nights and regional wine tasting at the cellar doors in Eguisheim and surrounds. After stopping off in Bitche and viewing the citadel and the "Gardens of Peace" we headed over to Lembach (entry place to view the Maginot Line)to stay the night. The following day was Wissembourg for lunch before heading up the Deutches Weinstrasse ( German wine route) through the Rhine Pfalz area. A few more tastings and purchases before rolling on home to Darmstadt.

The next couple of days were taken up with trips to vineyards closer to home around Wiesbaden at Hessische Staatsweingüter Kloster Eberbach where "The Name of the Rose" with Sean Connery, originally a book by Umberto Ecco was produced in the the holy vaults beneath the monastery.
Kloster Eberbach [klos-tur ay-bur-bark] is a 12th Century Cistercian abbey and now the HQ of the German Wine Academy. These days some of the modern dry Rheingau Rieslings are as distinguished in their own way as the great sweet wines of the region. Dry Rieslings from the Rheinpfalz further south where we had just toured had always been a different matter – richer, riper and with a healthier balance of fruit intensity and acidity. Maybe the Rheingau was just too cool a microclimate to do the same thing. Could it be a change of generation, with younger, better-educated winemakers taking over from their parents in the same way as has happened elsewhere in winemaking Europe?

All of my vineyard purchases were white wines which is what Germany and the French Alsace are reknown for, I did however score some great reds from the French supermarkets which are always favourably priced. The French supermarkets provided a wonderful array or terrines, pates, cold meats, pastries and cheeses to help keep the furnace stoked for a large part of the trip :) Mmmmmmm just love the way the French do food!!!!!

All told 1200km in the car plus the boat trip, several train trips and a great deal of walking through villages,museums, churches, up mountains, through castles and fortifications and around vineyards. Totally exhausting but really fascinating and rewarding both in an intellectual and an olfactory sense. Gave my single a brain cell a real work out :)

Grilling In The Rain

The house party this year was an incredibly wet affair with deluging rain on the day prior, the day of the party and the following 2 days. Biblical type downpours that had me searching through the cellar to find enough timber for the contruction of the next ark. This year I bought Bettina a 6x3m pavillion as a birthday gift and this turned out to be a true god send.



It was large enough for everyone to huddle under without being to cramped and successfully avoid the worst of the wind and rain. It was a good turn out in general and as for every year the food, wine and beer was delicious. The wine cellar took a real battering but we got the food mix right this year and had very little left over by comparison to the other years where it has taken weeks to munch through the remaining dishes. On the Sunday after I stood in the back garden under an umbrella and defiantly cooked my recovery bar-b-que lunch for 8 staunch hangers on.



It was pretty bizarre but it still worked even though I was forced to change my t-shirt and jeans after lunch when they continued to squelch. Yeah the price of partying on regardless. The wine cellar took a real battering over that weekend but survived the onslaught and with due care and some diligent replacement purchases on my trip through the wine growing regions of central Europe it looks remarkably better once again :)

The UninTENTional Visitor

It has been a very busy year to date and there has been little time for writing. Best intentions for regular Blogging completely thwarted.

A few amusing anecdotes have arisen in the last few months and are worth recounting here.

I had a call from my mother some weeks ago, who upon returning to her house and having parked her car in the carport became aware of hiking tent which, in her absence, had been set up squarely in the middle of her back garden lawn. Prime position on the best piece of lawn.

She was not expecting visitors herself, nor had her sons mentioned any of their friends passing through.

She went into the back garden and proceeded to walk around the tent. It was a small light weight dome style hike tent with a camouflage pattern fabric. The flap was open and there was no sign of habitation. No rucksack, no sleeping bag, no sign of personal belongings or a person what so ever. She walked around the side of the house looking for any sign of a visitor or a note but found nothing. Eventually she decided that the owner must have gone for a walk to the local shops and would eventually return at some point.

As the sun started to set she occasionally looked out from her bedroom window which overlooked the garden to see if anyone had shown up yet. Still nothing. Much later that evening she even went back out to the garden for another look around but the garden was empty apart from the tent which simply sat there, flap swaying in the breeze, silently mocking her.

The following day and the day after still provided no further answers to the mystery of the tent and its owner.

Upon discussing it with my elder brother he simply said to her, “ Mum, these things are as light as a feather and it has probably been blown in by the wind from somewhere nearby.” Given that she had been having quite windy weather in recent times this seemed quite plausible. That the tent would have needed to clear the surrounding houses, TV antennas and tree tops and then for it to land upright and squarely positioned, bang in the middle of the rear garden, was quite incredible.

My mother hung a sign on the front gate for several weeks saying, “Tent Found – Enquire Within”, but there was no response.

I can imagine some poor hiker setting up his tent, turning around to get the pegs to fasten it down and then turning back to see it sailing away into the wild blue yonder. My brother is right though, it could have come from a long, long way away. Just no telling. Life is full of the unexpected which is what makes it so great.

Brass Monkies In Germany

What a beginning to March! The weather here has been more than a little ferocious of late with the snow falls being the heaviest in 15 years.

Last Friday it snowed relentlessly the entire day and left a blanket across Frankfurt and Darmstadt that was up to 30cm thick in places. The transport network basically failed as buses found their normal routes iced over, transport trucks jack knifed on the autobahns and regular vehicles put their own spin on things, adding to the crash statistics. On Friday alone there were over 250 vehicle accidents in the Hessen area and in Germany 10 fatalities, the highest in Europe.

With cars reduced to crawl speed, commuters shuffling along the iced over pavements and the train service becoming more delayed by the hour, it was a total nightmare getting home. My regular 1 hour and 45 minutes commuting time required almost double that, which I managed to see through with a variety of train station bars and local pubs sheltering me against the storm until the next transport service was available. The temperatures required for snow to fall are not so low but the wind factor can make it feel like entering into a cryogenic chamber. It is utterly freezing..brrrrr!





It brings to mind and old addage, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey". This saying comes about from the days of the sailing ships when cannon balls were racked in pyramid form beside the cannons. The lower tier of balls rested on a brass plate covered in indentations to hold the lower level in place which was known as, "the monkey" . In really cold weather the brass metal plate would shrink and the cannon balls would roll off all over the decking undoubtably causing mayhem. Hence the saying.

We have had some reprieve over the last 3 days with only minor falls here in Hessen where as Bayern and the Black Forest areas were hit yet again on Sunday causing further chaos. Bayern has been busy digging itself out of over 3 metres of snow in the last few weeks, only to have it all come back again in 24 hours. They have had mountain avalanches and the roofs of public buildings collapsing under the weight. One ice rink hall roof collapsed killing several people inside. Monday saw schools and train services completely cancelled in the south and south west.

Given how much I detest having to go out in the early mornings to clear the footpath of snow, a legal requirement here in Germany, we have had it pretty good here in the mid-West of the country.

Today it has been snowing lightly for the last 5 hours and I truly hope that it will clear before much longer. Weather experts (ha ha ha) say it could continue till the end of April. Welcome to the ice age! My greatest hope lies (optimum word) in the knowledge that, “ Little boys who tell lies, grow up to become weather forecasters!”. In the meantime I will maintain the lease payments on my husky dog team and sled.

Mush! Mush!

Elton John Howard

It is alleged that the fastest selling nostalagia album in Australia in the last 12 months has been :

"Captain Bombastic and the Brown Shirt Cowboys".


Also picked up recently:

"What a silly, boring little man. His only function is to let you know what Harry Potter's going to look like when he's old."

British comedian Billy Connolly on Prime Minister John Howard.

Pink Elephants And Needles Of Ice

Things certainly are cold here and getting colder all the time. Yesterday the wind was howling and driving blankets of wet snow along with it. Horizontal blizzard. I looked up as I got off the tram and my face was smattered with big wet flakes of snow that instantly melted and ran down my front. With a 40 kmh wind in your face it then becomes absolutely freeeeezing!!

As for Moscow, wow are they suffering the wildest extremes ever. We have a saying here, " Kannst du den Wodka von Ostwind her riechen?" or "Can you smell the vodka on the wind from the east?" When the wind blows hard out of the East from Russia, the temperatures here absolutely plummet like a stone a few days later.

It was -26 celsius in Moscow yesterday and 2 weeks ago it was down to -37 celsius. Out at the oil fields in Siberia it went down to -63 celsius. People in Moscow were being rushed to hospital with frozen eyeballs. Now that's what I call a very cold stare. They are enduring some of the coldest weather since 1927 and the death toll is steadily mounting.

A Russian circus resorted to giant vodka cocktails in an attempt to protect performing elephants from extreme cold. One of the animals got so drunk it nearly destroyed the circus. The clear liquor was added to the animals’ water buckets as they began to feel the chill of temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius. The elephant trainer was quoted as saying, "“Yesterday we gave one of the elephants a bucket and the circus lost its heater — the elephant just tore it off.” Zookeepers are taking a similar approach in the town of Lipetsk, south of Moscow, keeping macaque monkeys warm with sweet wine which is dispensed to them three times per day. I have heard of pink gins so maybe this is where pink elephants come from. He he he.

Last week we had 2 days of blanketing fog in Darmstadt. A real pea souper.

When I first awoke in the morning I thought it had snowed over night but as my eyes slowly peeled back with the dawn light I realised that it was not really snow white but more a very pale shade of grey. I though I was seeing things and after some eye rubbing I went out the back door and realised that everything was needled in ice which was allowing the colours from underneath to taint the colour of the ice.

The droplets of moisture in the fog froze to everything and produced these needle fine crystals, like cactus spines, in clumps along every outdoor surface. It was bizarrely pretty. The trees, the grass, the fences and even the cars which looked liked hedgehogs, were coated in it.

My friend Lynne took this picture on the same morning where she lives across town.



It really was just so beautiful and other worldly. I have never seen the likes of it before. A new highlight of life in a very cold Germany.

What's In A Name?

I came across this map the other day highlighting some of Germanies more unusual town and city names. Every single marked town on this map translates into something bizarre. I include here some of the basic translations and I will let you be the judge. Nothing is sacred. He he he! I do love Germany and its people but where do they get these names from? Mein Gott! I will find out. I feel I must travel to these enclaves of deepest and darkest Germanic heritage in search of the truth. Possibly when visiting Kuhbier we can chew the fat with the locals and eventually end up back in Wixhausen for prolonged mastication of the facts.

Here are those names........

Kotzen - Vomit
Pissen - Urinate
Gammelshausen- Hippie Houses
Wixhausen - Wankers Houses
Fickmühlen - F**k Mills
Blödesheim - Stupid-ville
Affendorf - Village of Apes
Venusberg- Mount of Venus
Tuntenhausen - Transvestite - ville
Böß Gesäß - Bad Ass
Fickingen - F**king
Kuhbier - Cow beer
Bussenberg - Breast Mountain
Faulebutter- Rancid Butter
Drogen - Drugs
Oberkotzen - Vomit over
Mückenloch - Dirty Hole

What Goes Up Must Come Down.

An interesting question that I came across the other day.

“ We often see images of crowds of people firing hundreds of rounds of bullets into the air in celebration. What happens to those bullets? Surely they cannot keep heading into space forever? When gravity finally takes over, why aren’t they falling and killing the people that fired them?”

A great answer by Dr Karl S. Kruszelnicki.

“I’ve never been in such a crowd, but I would guess that most of these revellers think their bullets can’t hurt them. They’d be wrong.

The first thing to realise is that what goes up must come down – albeit, in the case of a bullet, more slowly. A bullet is fired with a typical muzzle velocity of about 3,000 kmh. Once gases stop pushing it, and it has well and truly left the barrel of the gun, it begins to slow. When it is fired upwards, two forces are acting to slow it – the resistance of the air and the downward suck of gravity. Typically a bullet takes about 30 seconds to climb to a height of around three kilometres. Eventually it will come to a dead halt, then begin its descent.

The suck of gravity is not nearly as powerful as the explosive gases that first fired the bullet from the barrel, so the plummeting projectile will only accelerate to a speed of somewhere between 330and 770 kmh – depending on the weight and the shape of the bullet.

A speed of 770kmh may be much slower than 3000kmh, but it is still more than enough for a bullet to penetrate a human skull (you need only 220kmh to do that). Most people who have been hit by bullets falling from the sky are struck on their upper back, the top of their head or their shoulders.

After the end of the Gulf War, Kuwaitis celebrated by firing weapons into the air and 20 died from falling bullets.

In Los Angeles between 1985 and 1992, doctors at the King/Drew Medical Centre treated 118 people for random falling-bullet injuries. Thirty eight died. Practically all of the injuries were caused by holiday-wekend party-goers discharging weapons.

Unfortunately, there have been instances in Australia where bullets have been fired into the air during celebrations. A few years back, a nine year old girl (in Belfield, Sydney) was watching New Year’s Eve fireworks with her parents in their driveway. At 12.05am, January 1st, 2002, a bullet fell out of the sky and lodged in her upper arm. If she had been standing a few centimetres to one side, she could have been killed.”

Things That Go Bump In The Night.

I realise this has nothing what so ever to do Europe and my time here but I was recounting it to another person and I thought I should share it. The things we dooooooo!

We had a young Scottish guy who was working with us on a minerals exploration drilling program up in the far north of Australia on the Gulf of Carpentaria. We were camping out in an abandonded homestead about 300km north of the nearest town. Coming from central Scotland, Donald firmly believed in ghosties and ghouls and all things that go bump in the night.

A couple of us got together before Donald arrived at the camp and made a cassette tape with about 15 min of silence at the start and then we had people clanking lengths of chain, murmuring and laughing in deep spooky voices. This would go for about 20 seconds and then there would be a pause of about a minute or so before starting up again and so forth for about a total of 10 minutes.

On the night of his arrival, as we sat around the camp fire, we all told him tales of a group of murdered stockmen that were ambushed by aboriginies over 100 years before in the dry river bed below the homestead. Having sufficiently spooked him, we declared it a night, turned off the portable diesel generator that was running the lights and crawled into our swags / sleeping bags.
Behind the rusty old water tank about 30 meters away, we had placed the cassette player running on batteries and turned it on. Everyone said good night to each other and pretended to be fast asleep within minutes.

About 15 minutes later it began and Donald sat straight up and yelled, "Fook did you hear that???" We took it in turns in the dark to respond to him telling him to shut up and go to sleep and that there were no sounds and that he was dreaming. Of course we were all lying there quaking in stifled laughter as Donald rapidly progressed towards complete nervous hysteria. After about the 4th round of ghostly noises he bolted out of bed, ran outside and started up the portable generator, flooding the camp in lights. He stood with his back to the dying embers of the camp fire and a long handled shovel braced across his chest, staring wildly into the night.

We left him standing there to enjoy the sounds of a blissfully quiet evening in the bush whilst we all turned over and went to sleep.

Even to this day he has never been told the truth. I mean to say what are mates for.

Awwww You've Surrendered !!!

My brother and his family recently travelled to South Africa and regaled me with this story.

Whilst in Nairobi they visited a rather unique open air meat speciality restaurant aptly named, “Carnivore”, which serves a host of various animals grilled to perfection and is widely regarded as one of 'Africa's Greatest Eating Experiences'.

After being seated by a large African waiter they were given an array of bowls with various dipping sauces and a small pennant flag on a stand which read “Carnivore”. When they enquired into the reason for the flag they were told in his booming barritone, “ Dis is your flag, when it is up we will keep coming with the food and when it is lying over it means you have surrendered but I hope you do not surrender!”

Skewered upon converted masai spears over a centrally located char grill were a host of meats including lamb, pork, venison, rump and sirloin beef, lamb, spare ribs, chicken wings, sausages and local specialities including zebra, ostrich, crocodile, giraffe, impala and hartebeest.

The waiting chefs appeared table side and proceeded to carve meat direct from the skewers onto the cast iron plates on the table. Everytime the plates were even beginning to show signs of depletion the servers would reappear and slice another plate full of whatever you desired.

Plate upon plate arrived and hence it was not overly long before my brother and family were slowly turning green at the gills and despite the urge to sample as much as possible of the offered fare, the sheer physics of abdominal expansion eventually won out.

My brother laid the flag on it its side and out of nowhere the large African waiter appeared once more and said with a look of disappointment, “Awwww you have surrendered, what a shame!”. The guy obviously had a wild sense of humour although I think the diners were to full to laugh themselves without risking an unwanted physical reaction.

There is a vegetarian menu available with salads and vegetable side dishes but it goes without saying that you would probably find the ambience upsetting on moral grounds if you were a vegetarian.

If you are headed to Nairobi then all I can say is, “Bon apetit!”

John (Milton) Howard - Prime Minister Of Paradise Lost

One of the things that has most upset me in the time I have lived here in Germany, is the way in which my home country of Australia has changed in the eyes of the world, forever. I was always happy to go forth into the world and state my nationality with pride and the certain knowledge that we, Australians, were the most eclectic mix of race, religion and politics on the face of the planet. We were a nation built on the cultural foundation of every other nationality on the planet. We have never shown reluctance to accept the ways of others, no matter their background, until the spin doctors in Canberra started the fear and loathing propaganda. A campaign which to my mind was responsible for setting off the race riots in Bondi.

The world was welcome to share our land and our lives once upon a time.

Since my departure from Australia I have watched in mute anger and desperation as dentention camps sprung up in the deserts, people being detained without chance of reprieve for years on end. I have watched in disbelief as an anti-terrorism bill, which was defeated in the British parliament due to infringements of the Human Rights Act, was swept in to law in Australia. Our constitution had never needed or required a Human Rights Act before yet the failure to instigate one has enabled the Howard government to push this bill into law virtually without opposition. A large smoke screen was also thrown up at the time of its instigation by making sweeping reforms in the Industrial Relations laws that dramatically affected every working Australian.

Did it ever occur to you Mr Howard, the type of legacy that you leave behind you for your children's children? I think not. Paradise lost! Paranoia found!

I came across the excerpt below recently and felt it really said just so much about our current political and social direction in recent times. I will let you the reader draw your own conclusions.


“What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider…the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think…for people who did not want to think anyway, gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about…and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crisis’ and so fascinated…by the machinations of the ‘national enemies’, without and within, that wehad no time to thinkabout these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us…

“Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted’, that unless one understood that the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’…must one day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer sees the corn growing…Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

“You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone…you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble’. But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.

“That’s the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.

“You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father…could never have imagined.”

From Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (University of Chicago Press, 1955)

What It Means To Be British

One of the British national daily newspapers is asking readers
"What it means to be British?". Some of the emails are hilarious,. This is one from a chap in Switzerland ...

Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for
a Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a
Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch
American shows on a Japanese TV and when they are overseas, in trying to be popular, they pretend to be Irish.
And the most British thing of all?
Suspicion of anything foreign.

Good Wine And Cheese Don’t Go Together?

Oh my god, it’s the end of the world as I know it! All is lost! My senses are numb with shock and my lips tremble in despair. My darkest hour is upon me as it would seem that one of favourite past times is under assult by the boffins.

The New Scientist Magazine recently reported the following findings:

Don’t waste good wine if you are eating cheese. The magazine shows the wine buff’s favourite accompaniment masks the complex flavours of wine.

Researchers at the department of viticulture and oenology at the University of California asked a team of wine tatsters to evaluate cheap and expensive versions of four different red wines.

After cheese, the wines were judged to taste flatter, with pinot noir, shiraz and cabernet sauvignon all deemed to have lost flavour.

The scientists believe proteins in cheese might bind to flavour compounds in wineand make them harder to taste. "


Hmmmmmm!

Cheese has presented many dilemmas in its time even to leaders of the free world:

“How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese? “
--Charles De Gaulle

Personally I think the wine has little choice in my world but to continue to suffer, as nothing in this world gives me more happiness than a big chunk of Rocquefort or Mimolette washed down with a glass of vintage 1997 Barolo or 2000 Margaux. I’ll drink to that!

Wine all Wine!

You must be very patient to reap the rewards of aged wine. Use anything and everything you must to avoid drinking it too soon. I've had 6 trips to the Betty Ford clinic whilst waiting.

Cellar 1

Banal Humour

Some more banal humour for your inevitable titillation:

· I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my Grandfather. Not kicking and screaming like the passengers in his car.

· Two atoms are walking down the road. One turns to the other and says, "I think I've lost a neutron". There other one says, "Are you sure?" He feels himself up and down and says, "Yes, I'm positive."

· A priest, a rabbi and a vicar walk into a bar The barman says, "Is this some kind of joke?"

· Two hungry goats are walking around Hollywood when one of them finds a discarded reel of film and gobbles it up. The other goat asks: 'What was it like?' to which his mate replies: 'Not bad. Not as good as the book.'

· What do you get if you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter?
· Pumpkin Pi

· My grandmother started walking 5 miles a day when she was 60. She is now 97 and we don't know where she is.

· "Hey," says one musician to another, "who was that piccolo I saw you out with last night?" "That was no piccolo," he replied, "that was my fife."

The Importance Of Getting Drunk

A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffolo and when a herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole because the general speed and health of the whole keeps improving by the regular culling of the weakest members.

In much the same way, the human brain can operate only as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, we all know, kills off brain cells but naturally it attacks the slowest and weakest cells first. In this way, regular consumption of alcohol eliminates the weaker cells, constantly making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. The result of this in-depth epidemiological study, verify and validate the casual link between all-weekend parties and the achievment of excellence in all disiplines. It also explains why, after a few short years of leaving university, getting married, having kids and more responsibilities in life, most workers cannot keep up with the performance of the new graduates. Only those that stick to the strict regime of voracious alcohol consumption can maintain the intellectual levels that they achieved in their years at university.

If you feel that you are losing your competitive edge, do not sit and shudder at home – get out there and get back into the pub.

Courtesy of The Ducks and Drakes Club of London.
(Cockney rhyming slang for ``the shakes´´)

Sand Dunes On The Rhine River

Just to the south of us here where the Rhine River has rather a wide flood valley there are massive sand dunes. Surprised ? I sure as hell was considering that everything else that is visible as far as the eye can see is lush verdent green pastures, agricultural fields, state forestry and buildings.

It is really bizzare but apparently the Rhine Valley was some 4,000 metres deep 150 mil years ago and the mighty river has slowly filled its flood plains and valley floor with river washed gravels and sands.

Today they are visible as these massive waves of dunes that has one expecting to see Peter O’Toole, as Lawrence of Arabia, pissed to the eyeballs on schnapps and cider, charging down them on his trusty Arabian steed, bedouin headress flying in the breeze, sword brandished aloft.

( *** Diary note: Apple Harvest 2006, must procure one horse, one sword, one Arabian Nights costume, large goat skin water bag for cider...hmmmm.........)

Searching For Heidi Part 2

The ferry ride was great and was certainly closer to a ship than a ferry. It was 2 decks high with 1st and 2nd class lounges, bars and a restaurant.



The houses that we passed on the lakes edge were nothing short of mini castles with their turreted boathouses and luxury launches and yachts tethered below them. We reached Luzern and were picked up by minibus and transported to the Palace Luzern.



Once again we were all given very nice junior suites with lake and city views. We had a bit of time to ourselves before our tour of the property with the Managing Director Mr. Andrea Jorger. Once again it was a true hotel of the grand palace era with huge chandelliers and massive marmotte pillars through the main lobby and lounges. We had canapes and very good pinot grigio in the lounge before heading to Jaspers restaurant which holds 16 gualt millau points. Classic but contemporary in its distinctive design, the Jasper embraces the finest furnishings and flavours.

"Their young chef Françoise Wicki (GaultMillau “Swiss Discovery of the Year 2001”) has already won critical acclaim for her culinary expertise. She possesses an intuitive feel for refined product combinations."

We had a 3 course meal interspersed with wonderful home made breads and olive oil for dipping. The entree was sauteed scallops with glazed celery and a herb pesto. The main was a Double veal rib chop (deboned)with rosemary potatoes, kenya beans and boletus and for desert an elder creme brulee with granita and pastry. Her remarkable use of herbs and spices create dishes that simply sparkled with surprise. The wines were also very good and we had a 2003 Sauvignon Blanc by Rosenauer from Luzern and a 2002 Blauburgunder also from Rosenauer. We then retired to the lobby bar with its classical English ambience for a snifter or 3 of Swiss William Pear schnapps and some more calvados. As it was Saturday night my colleague Adrian and I then took a long leisurely stroll through the old city of Luzern, through its winding cobbled lanes with its bars and clubs and hyper youths. An excellent little outing. Headed back to the Luzern casino to its night club for a quick beer before retiring at around 2.00am for a few hours sleep before the Sunday outing.

After a mammoth buffet breakfast we left our luggage with the concierge to be forwarded to Arth Goldau rail station where we would meet our train to Berne later in the day. We strolled around the lake with our courtesy hotel backpacks filled with picnic lunch to the ferry terminal and then sailed to Vitznau where we took the funicular Rigi train to the top of Mt Rigi. It was about 35 minutes to the top but the views to all points of the compass were sensational. We sat on the grass with our picnic lunches and took in the breath taking panorama. Nice lunch with sandwiches, fruit, chocolate, cheeses and salad.



We then took a different train line back down the mountain to Arth Goldau via Klösterli. There we took a regional express to Berne before changing trains again and heading back to Frankfurt via Mannheim. All in all a delightful 3 days but I have to say that it was a fairly strenuous and demanding little jaunt, probably due in the main to a complete over indulgence both gastronomical and visual.

Searching For Heidi Part 1

Just back from a weeks holidays which was mainly spent in Darmstadt working on the garden. Last Friday I left with 4 work colleagues for a 3 day trip to Switzerland on a hotel familiarisation and returned late last night. We caught the ICE high speed express service to Interlaken on Friday morning and after a train change in Berne we zoomed off down through the alps along the side of Lake Thun, arriving in Interlaken about 5pm.

We were met at the station by Beate Makowsky the Sales Manager from The Victoria Jungfrau Grand Hotel and taken to the hotel. It is a Grand Hotel in the true tradition of palaces of its era and boasts a lot of art deco and magnificent ballrooms overhung with fabulous crystal chandeliers. It was the height of Victorian society and fashion to stay at these types of hotel by the aristocracy in turn of the century europe. They have just finished building a state of the art spa onto the rear of the hotel which also has a new wing of 12 suites. We were each given a stunning new suite of about 60 square meters, with Bang & Olufsen TV and stereo, big balconies with recliners and views to the peak of the Jungfrau, and bathroom big enough to accomodate a normal lounge room in marmotte marble and glass. Very modern and wonderfully comfortable with a full lounge sitting area and writing desk. Normally 900 swiss francs per night. For James and friends, free !!!! Gotta love that word.



We were given enough time to enjoy their new spa complex for 1.5 hrs and then we met in the lobby for a tour of the hotel and its facilities.

At the end of the tour we were taken to the cellar for glasses of Laurent Perrier vintage champagne and hors dourves. This was followed by a four course dinner in La Terrasse, an elegant restaurant with exquisite French cuisine and piano entertainment and running 16 gualt millau points. Courses included Salmon tatare with bretzeli,caviar and herb salad followed by a soup of Fennel cuppuccino with saffron blossoms. The main course was a saddle of veal with star anise and chilli jus on risotto and topped with horns of plenty mushrooms. The final round was a tasting of plums dome three ways as a plum crumble, plum mousse and plum sorbet inside a delicate wafer bowl. Dinner was served with a variety of Swiss white and red wines which included Eppesses La Braise d'Enfer 2004 and a Pinot Noir Luzifer 2003. After dinner we were taken to the lobby bar where we were given our choice of after dinner drinks. I had a couple of glasses of a truly lush 1981 Vintage Calvados by Christian Drouin. My, my but the gods were smiling and so was I. As we were so full to the gills we took a walk around the streets of Interlaken, looked in the shops and stopped at a bar for a couple of beers before returning to the hotel for a short but well earned sleep.



We were up again by 7am for breakfast and departed at 08.30am to the rail station where we caught the scenic train over the mountain passes to Bergenstock. The scenery was truly awesome and the lakes were so clear and the water blue from the glacial melt. We were met again by the hotel pickup service and driven the 15 km's to the Burgenstock Park Hotel



The hotel is perched on the edge of 1000m high enscarpment overlooking the lake to Luzern in the east. We had a full tour of the property before taking lunch in their traditional swiss restaurant the Taverna. Lunch for me was a traditional Bouillon mit Fladle which is a clear consomme with fine shreds of pancake followed by a Rosti with bar-b-que pork fillet and herb butter. After lunch we walked the trail out east on the Felsenweg path for a scenic 2km forty-minute clifftop walk to Europe’s fastest outdoor elevator which makes the 100-metre trip up to the mountain station of the Bürgenstock (1,114 m above sea level) in just 55 seconds. It is a mindblowing ascent in a glass fronted elevator which rides in a steel cross member tower. The lift rises at 3.42 meters a second for the last 123 meters of the ascent. It was built by the Schindler company and I couldn't help but remark, " Ahh, so this must be Schindlers Lift!"



At the top we walked around the various lookouts, watched an aircraft flying by at head height towing a glider, observed a huge Zepplin cruising around the lake 500 meters below and took in the unfettered view of a miriad of yachts, launches and ferries plying the lake below. We had coffee at the restaurant before returning via the lift and by foot to the hotel where we then took the funicular rail or zahnrad bahn (tooth wheel train) to the lake below to catch the ferry to Luzern.

Local Market

They had there big annual town market festival on the weekend just past here in Darmstadt. Lots of stalls with all the usual hand made hobby arts as well as a lot of baubels and trinkets.

The food stands offered a wide array of traditional German foods in the form of huge bratwursts and pudding type sausages as well as the endless arrays of continental bakery produce.

The big carousel was a real Magic Roundabout type of affair with the organ pipe music blaring out so loud that most of the kiddies were only screaming because they couldn’t hear themselves anymore and thought they had gone permenantly deaf. ( ``Hey Mum!, Hey Dad!, I’m not screaming with laughter and joy this really hurts you idiots and I’m getting really dizzy as well !!!)

They had the buskers out and about and most of them seem to have a piano accordion strapped on. Some of the gypsy traditional stuff is O.K. but the rest sounds like Happy Hammond Hour at the Sunset Hills Home for the Musically Bereft.