A Short Interlude in the Fatherland

Well as you may or may not know over the easter weekend I decided to take a small jaunt to Germany. Correct, not your average weekend away, but thanks to the power of the Lords of Qantas we can make it so. 48 hours of traveling, 5 days of chilling. What more can the international man of leisure want??

Wednesday - Primed for Launch
A normal morning, aside from the fact I am sporting a suit bag and my camera backpack. Was going to walk to the station, however the sweating and immense load dictated otherwise.

A small taxi ride, a little working, another taxi ride, and the next thing you know I'm meeting Kat's dad to pick up the weird Staff Travel paper thingy they sent him. He looked very official in his overalls and shiny vest thingy. I was impressed.

Next stop the check in counter at which I was handed straight off the bat a shiny business class boarding pass. Yay for the Global Financial Crisis.

The next thing you know, I'm at Changi Airport in Singers. Smells the same, looks the same. It's a smell I will always associate with SE Asia. I stop past the transit counter (never had to do this before) and the kind bearded man after about 10 minutes gives me my second business class boarding pass.

A quick trip to the chemist for my favourite Singaporean product, melatonin and voila, here we are in Frankfurt!

Thursday AM - Frankfurt to Dortmund
Ahh Germany. Land of sausages, techno, the autobahn and fast trains. It's good to be back. For some perculiar reason it feels familiar, like home away from home. My bag flies out of the plane, my shiny EU passport lets me fly through immigration, and I totter down to the DB office which feels like it's heated to 35C.

I get myself a ticket to Dortmund, and head down to the station.

Interesting fact #1: In Germany they sometimes have two trains that are going to different destinations (in this example Brussels and Amsterdam) joined together.

I only discovered this because I got on the wrong end of the train. Thankfully the nice conductor lady told me that I could get off the train at Koln and go down the other end. Phew.

Interesting fact #2: The ICE travels at over 300km/h. That's kinda cool.

At Duisberg I changed to a strange overnight train for my final two stops to Dortmund.

Herr Marcial met me at Dortmund Hbf and we returned to the freshly decorated Schloss Marcial to be greeted by Eva and a very excited Bruno. Someone had told him that presents were coming from Australia. He was cheekily peeking out of the window and waving as we arrived.

Thursday PM - Chillin' in Dortmund

First things first. The presents must be delivered! Kat had kindly bought a kangaroo and a koala (which played a small excerpt from "Waltzing Matilda") for Bruno. At first he wasn't keen on the presents, but this would change later on as he got used to them...

Having a shower with fine German water was luxurious. We had some lunch, and then headed out to the shops for some groceries.

I suppose we were in the equivalent of David Jones, but the selection of charcuterie, cheese, organic and fine foods was amazing. I've never seen so much delightful fat in one place!! When ordering gruyere we were asked whether we wanted "normal" or "cave aged". What kind of a question is that.. pfft!!

For dinner we made schnitzel served with potato salad. In the potato salad was a vinagrette of white balsamic and a funny herb called bear's garlic. Oddly enough it tasted extraordinarily like garlic. I would like to try to grow some, as it was a great flavour combined with the fact it was leafy.

After dinner a little photo shoot. First up Mr. Koala, Mrs. Kangaroo, Bruno and Daniel:

Secondly, the happy family:

Surprisingly I was still feeling OK. We headed down to Dortmund airport to pick up our rental car, a grotesquely underpowered E-Class. A supercharged 1.8L is NOT big enough to power this car let me assure you!! Still it was a relaxing drive, although the tiredness and tight streets were a bit hair raising at first.

For our final stop for the evening, Big Dan and I wandered down to Domicil - some gay bar (kidding) that the crew hang out it. We were joined by the one and only Herr Borgmann of the famous Borgmann Industries. That was pretty much it for Thursday. As you can imagine, quite a long day!

Friday - Spring in Germany
Glad I packed my shorts ladies, as the weather was faaaaaaaaantastic. Trees were blossoming, the sky was blue. Ahh.. this is the life.

First stop here. Schloss Cappenberg. There was supposed to be a wildlife park. It was closed, despite the website saying otherwise. The old manor was pretty cool though. It's strange for us children of a young country to just wander around buildings that were put up before the white man even arrived in our country.

Second stop was Münster for some zoo action with Bruno.

Was a great day to be walking around, although the sun (and my poor selection of lense) deprives you of the animal pics I just KNOW you were hoping for...
After returning home I prepared the menu for Friday's Asian Feast:

1. Hainenese Chicken & Rice (with firey chilli sauce that will feature again later on!!)
2. Char Sui
3. Ants Climbing Trees

Amazingly even in Dortmund there is an asian grocery (with the silliest website in the world) so we took another stroll to grab some supplies (including some Tsingtao!).

The rest of the afternoon we drank our Tsingtao, some Franziskaner (awesome!), roasted pork...

...and prepared for dinner.

Served with only the finest of champagne and wines (I forget what they were, Dan can add in the comments).... Here we see Dan and Ene contemplating the meal ahead...

Rockin. After dinner whilst the grown-ups chatted, Bruno and I retired to his castle to play Duplo. The young fella kept talking his native tongue to me, so I smiled a lot and nodded. By this time he was loving Waltzing Matilda. Again... and again.. and again.. and... again.. and again..

After many drinks, it was bedtime. Ahh... bed...

Saturday - Shoppin', Drinkin', Chillin', Grillin' and Spinnin'
We got up relatively late and dropped Eva and Bruno at the hauptbahnhof as they were heading up to the North Sea for a little break. Bruno took Mrs. Kangaroo with him. Hope he didn't go swimming!!

Dan and I grabbed some breakfast and headed down to the market to grab some meat for the BBQ.

Second cool shopping experience - Dortmund market.

All the produce you can imagine, and plenty you can't. Lamb? You want lamb? I'll give you three kinds of lamb young man! "Normal", "milk-fed" and "salt bush" (I think). Rabbits, hare, more kinds of poulty than you can think of. Lots of shit I have never even seen before. Awesome. We grabbed some lamb (to be marinated in the leftover chili sauce) and pork.

For the rest of the afternoon we sat in the sun and drank beer. I squeezed in a quick nap, and then it was off to Uwe's place with two crates full of Detroit classics.

I met Uwe (second from left) back in the day when he used to work for Dan, so it was good to catch up after so many years. What transpired was an evening of drinking, grilling and techno. What more could you want? Good times... must get some of those records sampled to mp3..

A couple of spliffs later and we were heading down to see the famous DJ Dash. Steffen is first on the left in the above pic. Many more drinks (well a couple I think?) and it was time for bed.

Sunday - Dortmund to Eltville
To the soundtrack of Marc Romboy, TLBJr and the Wighnomy Brothers (all Germans by coincidence!!!) it was time to tackle the famous autobahn.

We took the A2 down to the A45, briefly hit 200km/h and did 275km in a couple of hours....

Strange autobahn fact: most are 2 lanes each way for most of their length. 2 lanes children, "unlimited" speed in the left lane. Germans know how to KEEP RIGHT.

Next stop: Eltville and our hotel - Schloss Reinhartshausen.

Well this was all pretty spiffy being next to the Rhine, and in amongst the vinyards.

So what else to do but some fine dining and a lot of drinking. By the time we went to bed we were both a little loose.

Monday - Seedy, Wandering, Departing
Needless to say the next morning we both had ferocious hangovers. I really felt mostly on the verge of puking for the whole day. We tried the brunch buffet at the hotel, sadly this was wasted on me I'm afraid.

Dan and I wandered for a bit:in the delightful olde town set by the Rhine River....

Special Teutonic Pigeon:

Ahh springtime in the Fatherland.

We showered, checked out, went to a couple more vineyards (here and here) drank a lot of apple and grape juice (gosh was I dehydrated) and ate some of this. A tasty non-Italian pizza analogue!

Sadly it was time for us to head back to the airport, which we did. Dropped the car off, checked in and had some dinner. Then it was time to say au revior... until next time.

So the week drew to a close. It was amazing how much we got crammed in, but the strange thing was that not once did we feel rushed or busy. Such is the magic of Dan and Leigh.

Thanks to Mark, Kat, Dan, Eva, Bruno, Ene, Uwe, Dash and of course the fabulous crew of Qantas.

And there you have it. Next thing I was at work, living the dream. Little did I know the weekend would have something a little more dramatic in store for me... but that's a story for another time!

(P.S. FUCK THIS BLOGGER INTERFACE IT SUCKS BALLS!!!! THANKYOU!!!!)