For those of you who don’t know, it was actually Anette whon Barb and I met first back in 1999 and who subsequently introduced us to Frank a few years later when we came to visit her on our first Excellent German Adventure together back in 1999.

It was good to see Anette again and the last time Barb and I had seen her was at the Frankfurt airport on a stopover coming back from Spain in 2003. At that time, we had about 2 hours to spare and arranged with her in advance to meet us at the airport for a coffee.

For dinner that night, Frank and I decided to dine at a local place in Sörgenloch just a few blocks away from his house called the Schloss Sörgenloch. The Schloss was a bit higher up the scale than we eaten so far since my arrival.

The Schloss served what Frank called “German food” which, when you think of it, is really just food to the locals here.

Frank and I both ended up ordering different types of steaks and both of ours was done to perfection. I cold have eaten my steak with just a fork as I hardly needed to use the knife to cut it as it was so tender.

Road trip for a few more place settings

Over the course of the past few days that I have been with Frank, we have talked about a variety of different things – often comparing how things are in Germany to how things are in Canada. Although I had known that Frank and I shared a great many similar interests, cooking was one that has been an ongoing topic of conversation.

A few days ago we Frank brought up that he had bought some new dishes and showed me some of the samples and I immediately recognized them as the very same Villeroy and Boch style that Barb and I have at home. The style known as New Wave were bought when Barb and I went on a driving trip to San Francisco a few years ago and we brought back about 5-6 large bags full of plates from the Villeroy and Boch store in Carmel.

While we were on the topic of Villeroy and Boch, Frank mentioned that the V & B factory was in the town of Mettlach which was within driving distance from where he lived. As we had already talked about taking a driving trip to the town of Trier, doing a side trip to Mettlach was not going to be a problem.

Our plans for the day were now set.

By the time we were heading out to Mettlach in Frank’s car (an Audi A4 Avant), we had already been to several places together and I had already gotten used to driving on the highway with Frank. By gotten used to, I mean that I was comfortable with Frank driving at 160-220 km/hr on the highway which I should point out was fairly typical of the speeds which most cars were travelling here.

If nothing else, it got you to your destination a whole lot faster than it would driving in Canada.

Mettlach is a few hundred kilometres away and we got there in about 90 minutes due to the above mentioned driving speeds.

As soon as you arrive in the small town of Mettlach, it is immediately understood that this is a company town and that Villeroy and Boch is the company.

Overlooking the Saar River and dominating the town is the large 18th century French chateaux-like head office building for Villeroy and Boch which has the large manufacturing facilities (or werks in the area in the back of the main building. Given that Villeroy and Boch has been around since 1748, I’m sure that the “chateaux-like” building is probably very much a real chateaux inside.

Before leaving home, Frank shared with me the long list of items that he planned on purchasing from the factory outlet store. We grabbed the largest cart that was available at the store and went back to the section where the New Wave products were.

While Frank was selecting all of the products that we on his list, I mostly spent my time perusing the other products in the store. I discovered that there was now an extension to the New Wave line called New Wave Gold and New Wave Platinum. This, of course, is a common tactic by most manufacturers that they extend an existing product line and bring out a “limited exclusive” version of it. I told Frank that when they bring out New Wave Plutonium I would consider switching.

After Frank had finished selecting all of his items and that I didn’t have anything that I wanted to get, we headed for the checkout.

We spent a bit more time exploring around Mettlach including the many more factory outlet type stores and also did a quick tour of the Villeroy and Boch showroom for kitchen and bathroom products. The most important discovery that we made here was that one can buy the New Wave versions of a bathroom sink and bathtub. This is important to know so that if you ever wish to serve dinner in your bathroom you’ll be comfortable knowing that everything will be matching.

After all of the shopping and touring the Villeroy and Boch showroom, we had worked up an appetite for lunch and we ate at a small roadside stand selling the usual assortments of wursts (bratwurst, weiswurst and so on) and of course always served with an along with a bröchen (a bun to us).

We were eating our and were joined by many other local people who happened to be on their own lunch hour. Frank happened to ask one of the people how long it might take to drive to Trier (our next destination). When then started was a lively conversation between several of the people that began with one person saying that the trip would take 20 minutes and others saying 40 minutes. It was all in good fun but it was amusing to see that a simple question about driving could start such a big discussion.

For the record it took 40 minutes.

The drive to Trier was otherwise uneventful and we set about to discover a little about the small town of Trier. Frank told me was reported to be the oldest town in Germany dating back about 2000 years. I couldn’t help but think that Vancouver, at about 100 years old, was in quite a different age category.

Given the age of Trier, it is not surprising that there are many Roman-era things of interest in the town which Frank and I set about exploring in the 2-3 hours that we were in the town.

Trier was somewhat unusual in that there are few places in Germany with any hint of Roman remains – especially when contrasted to the experience that we had in Italy last year where there are Roman artifacts literally on every street corner.

After we has seen enough of Trier and seeing how it was getting late in the afternoon, we of course needed to stop for a break which invariably means cake.

We stopped at a nice cafe and found that they had the carried the holy grail of German cakes: Schwarzwälder kirschtorte. To us: Blackforest Cake.

In Vancouver, there are probably hundreds of places that carry Blackforest cake but sadly, all of the places that I have eaten them do not do the Schwartzwald kirschetorte any justice. The biggest problem is that the locally made cakes are far too sweet (especially the whipped cream). All of the German cakes and pastries that I have ever eaten have far less sugar and as a result I find have a much more pleasant taste – never too sweet.

On the way home from Trier, Frank offered me a rare treat as I would be allowed to drive his car back home from Trier.

I have driven the Autobahns before on our last trip to Germany and also on the highways of 4 other European countries. Of course, there is a certain mystique to driving the Autobahn as it is the only highways where unlimited speeds are allowed.

Contrary to popular belief, one cannot drive the Autobahns all day long with your foot to the floor going as fast as your car will allow. In fact, there are many sections of the Autobahn that do have speed limits and often traffic congestion limits your speed in many areas.

All of this notwithstanding, there’s simply nothing like driving the Autobahn.

In Frank’s Audi A4 (with a 2.0L turbo diesel engine), it had enough performance to be able to reach a decent speed (which for the record, has a top speed of about 235 km/hr) but best of all it got great gas mileage even after a few hundred kilometres of driving in the 200 km/hr range. I’m certain that my own M Roadster would have been sucking back far more gas had I been driving it here but with well over 100 more horsepower than Frank’s A4, we would also be talking about a much better top speed too.

Ah, dare to dream.

After we got back to Frank’s place, we prepared to go to the town of Wiesbaden to pickup Frank’s 6 year old daughter Lisle* with whom we would be spending the evening. Frank had also arranged for us to have dinner with Lisle’s and her mother Maria* the following day (Thursday).

* For privacy reasons, these names have been changed.

I have to be honest that I was a bit uncertain about meeting with Lisle as I don’t spend a lot of time around kids and around kids who only speak German I’d say that was pretty much zero.

Frank assured me that Lisle was quite a good child but that was only worth so much as I have rarely found parents to tell mew that their children were, how shall we say, ‘problems’.

We drove to Wiesbaden which is about 30 minutes away and I met Maria for a few minutes while Lisle prepared to go with us. Maria seemed a bit nervous at first but our first meeting seemed to go well enough.

Frank had asked me in advance if I would be ok with preparing dinner as he wished to spend some time with Lisle. Out dinner tonight was to be what Frank called “a typical German dinner”. This consisted of a variety of cold cuts, buns, cheese slices and a salad that I prepared.

While I was working in the kitchen, I could hear Frank and Lisle playing what sounded like soccer (or fussball as it is known in German) in the large living room.

It turned out that Lisle was learning some English in her school and during dinner we would talk about the German and English words for simple things at the dinner table.

Frank told me later on that Lisle seemed to like this activity of learning new English words and that seemed to break some of the ice between us.

After dinner, Frank left to drop Lisle back at her home and I was left with some time to write some of this down on my computer.

The countryside by bike

When Frank and I were trading emails several months ago about what I might want to do when I was staying with him, I had told Frank that I wouldn’t mind going for a bike ride if the weather was good. As such, Frank had already made some arrangements to borrow a second bike for me and today (Thursday) we spent a few hours going for a ride in the countryside around his town.

Sörgenloch is a small town that sits at the edge of a farming region and within a hundred meters of Frank’s house, there are numerous farms that go on as far as the eye can see.

In between many of the farms are a series of paved trails which seemed to be made specifically for bicycles.

We went out for about 8 or 10 kilometres before stopping at a nice local place called Jordan’s in the small town of Köngernheim. Under the shade of the umbrellas in their outdoor garden area, we enjoyed a great meal and observed many other people arriving by bike along the trail which ran right beside their restaurant. Obviously they were used to people arriving by bike especially on a nice warm day like today.

I enjoyed a nice salad made with a type of crepe that was rolled up with ham and cut into slices. Just the light kind of meal that I was looking for before heading back to Sörgenloch on then return trip.

After we got back to Frank’s place, we prepared to go back to Wiesbaden as we would be spending the evening with Maria and Lisle.

When we picked up Maria and Lisle at their house, we took a drive up to a park known as Nerotal which offered a nice view of the city of Wiesbaden. I should say normally offers a nice view as we found out that much of the view was blocked due to the growth of many trees along the slope.

On the drive up to Nerotal we went through a neighbourhood which consisted of lots of old mansions – many that looked like small castles and ornately decorated. Without a doubt there were many people with money in the town of Wiesbaden.

One of the things that I immediately observed about Wiesbaden compared to the much larger city of Frankfurt where Frank and I had gone just a few days before was how much more culturally interesting Wiesbaden was. By this I mean that Frankfurt had, by comparison, very little that really distinguished itself than just another large metropolitan city. This was in contrast to other cities that I had been to like Berlin and Munich which seemed to have their own unique flavour.

Wiesbaden on the other hand, was in a class all on it’s own as it had so much history and unique architecture that was extremely interesting. I could easily spend a few days in Wiesbaden alone absorbing in the local scenery.

The four of us stopped for dinner at a restaurant called Lumen and we enjoyed a few hours together. One of the things that I noticed is that over the evening, Maria became much more comfortable speaking English and it was easy to take a liking to her as we found more and more things to talk about. Maria seemed genuinely surprised when I ordered my meal in German (I can only assume that Frank told her that I spoke no German). Little did Maria know that I had exhausted about 50% of my German vocabulary merely by ordering my meal.

After we had finished and driven back to Maria and Lisle’s house, we said our goodbye’s and headed for home. All in all, I think that things went with my experience with my two new German friends.

Excellent Adventure 2nd Stage

Today is Friday and I am writing most of this on the train heading towards Hamburg. I have temporarily separated from Frank as I am going onto the northern German town of Flensburg to stay one night with Barb’s uncle and aunt Claus and Renate and Barb’s cousin Steffen. I will be leaving Flensburg tomorrow morning and meeting up with Frank at our hotel in Hamburg where we will be staying for two days after that.

When I get to Hamburg in just over an hour from now, I will have about 7 minutes to change tracks and catch the connecting train from Hamburg to Flensburg. I have made arrangements for Claus and Renate to pick me up at the station in Flensburg but if I miss the connecting train, I will somehow have to contact them to let them know that I will be late.

Hopefully that doesn’t turn out to be something that becomes necessary. Generally, my limited experience with German trains is that they run on time but Frank has quite the different opinion and his feeling was that I would miss the connection to Flensburg. We’ll see.

Part 4 of my Excellent German Adventure will continue in a few days…

Baden

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I lucked out and was given an emergency row seat so I ended up having a good 6 feet of leg room instead of the normal 2 feet that you normally get in a regular seat. During the dinner service, I was surprised to see that Lufthansa was using real metal cutlery and not the plastic stuff normally seen on every airline that I’ve been on in the past few years. I can only assume that the Lufthansa people have done research and studies have shown that you cannot hurt anyone with the blunt metal knife provided with your meal.

Frank ended up meeting me at the Frankfurt airport and we took the highway to his town of Sörgenloch which is 45 kilometres outside of Frankfurt.

Frank had been telling me about the stages of building of his new house for about two years and how the detailed work on the inside was very time consuming since he was doing most of the work himself. He told me that the final few weeks before I was scheduled to arrive that he was practically working night and day trying to get as much of the dozens of remaining construction tasks completed.

While Frank had a few things left to get done yet, the house really looked great and it had a nice modern European look to it that I really liked.

Not Just another Walk in the Park

Today being Sunday and with many of the stores going to be closed, we’ve decided to make an outing of the day by going for a hike in the huge forested area known as the Pfälzer Wald (pronounced: faltser vald).

Many people may have heard of the Black Forest in Germany (known as the Schwarz Wald to the Germans – wald meaning forest) but the Pfälzer Wald was not familiar to me until Frank told me about it.

We drove to a small town of Neustadt which is about 85 Kms away from Frank’s house and was the entry point to the Pfälzer Wald for us.

We hiked up a path leading to the top of one of the hills and about 60-90 minutes later we arrived at a small restaurant on the top called Lambertskreuz. The restaurant had a few dozen bench tables outside under the trees where we ate out meal of schweinbraten and knödel (known as roast pork and potato dumplings to the rest of us).

Under normal circumstances I would say that this was a fairly heavy meal for lunch but this seemed to be a typical dish being eaten by everyone else and it was quite well prepared. Since we were both quite hungry after our long hike up the hill hill, we both dug into the food energetically.

Luckily, the majority of the hike was under the shade of trees as the weather was in the mid 20′s and fairly humid compared to Vancouver so it was easy to work up a sweat (and appetite).

The interesting part was that there were about 100 people seated at the tables of the restaurant (of all ages) and I asked Frank if most of the people had driven their cars to the top of the hill but he said that everyone would have walked up just like us. This is definitely not something that I would have seen in Vancouver – unless there was a parking lot.

Let them eat cake

It may be of no surprise to most that the German people enjoy a great selection of breads, cakes and pastries. Twice now in the morning, Frank has quietly snuck out before I have gotten dressed in the morning and returned with a fresh assortment of buns which we have enjoyed as part of our breakfast. Breakfast here often includes buns and jam and Frank has noted that he usually makes his own jam with the fruits that are in season. As you might imagine, Frank is quite the Renaissance man and we both have enjoyed talking about our exploits in the kitchen.

One other dietary routine that I have been getting used to is that around 4:00 in the afternoon, we would enjoy a small piece of cake (or maybe two small pieces). This is something that I was introduced into by Barb’s mother and father several years ago.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned that Barb’s parents are German too?

Monday Shopping Day

Regular readers will now that one of the favourite pastimes of ours when we get to Europe is to go shopping. As today was Monday and all of the stores were open again we took a drive into downtown Frankfurt to check out some of the stores in the shopping district known as Die Zeil.

Several blocks long and restricted to pedestrians only, the Zeil has several dozen stores in addition to several large department stores.

Being both the food enthusiasts, Frank and I started off at a WMF store which is a maker of all kinds of kitchen gadgets. Many cooking stores in the Vancouver area carry the high quality WMF products but having a whole store dedicated to them was too much to resist. We both ended up buying as few items before heading on but I can assure you that all things purchased were absolutely necessary.

By the time we had gone though a few other stores, we decided to stop for lunch and had a typical quick meal enjoyed by many of people of Frankfurt. I had a weiswürstchen (a grilled white sausage) on a bun topped with lots of senf (mustard) and Frank ordered another favorite called a fleischkäse (loosely translating to “meat cheese”, it is more of a sandwich meat that is sliced into think pieces and eaten on a bun).

Technically we were probably both committing a faux-pas by not washing down our lunch with a good German beer but for us, water was sufficient for our taste.

Tonight we plan on making some home made hamburgers at with some things that we bought at the local grocery store and generally take it easy tonight. Tomorrow I have plans to have lunch with our other friend Anette in town so I will not be spending the whole day with Frank.

Stay tuned for part 3 …

Baden

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No, it is the fact that I am actually posting this article while I’m on the plane that is the unique part.

It was right after we took off from Vancouver on this Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt that I noticed the small sign on the front wall that said “Hotspot”. Sure enough, there was wireless Internet available on this flight and I was quickly able to hook-up with my Dell Axim PDA. As such, I am able to bring you live coverage of my flight to Germany.

This puts online into a whole new category.

Germany Bound

You would think that with all of the planning that goes into our travel and all of the times that we have gone places that the thrill would have worn off by now. I can tell you without hesitation that none of this has ever lost any of its shine.

Ok, the planning of one place to another doesn’t have a huge amount of differences but let me tell you when the time has come to drive to the airport to start one of our Excellent Adventures, it feels just as exciting as our first trip together.

Speaking of which, the one significant part of this trip that’s different than all of the rest is the fact that Barb is at home right now instead of sitting in the seat beside me.

For those of you who are regular readers to my blog, you will know that Barb just returned from Tahiti just 5 days ago where she went on her own Excellent Adventure with her mother.

My trip to Germany will not technically be solo as I will be staying with my friend Frank (whom we first met on our first Excellent Adventure to Germany back in 2001) and the two of us will be travelling around a few parts of Germany together.

I actually first met Frank at the train station in Frankfurt when Barb and I came to stay with our friend Anette whom we met in the Cook Islands several years earlier. Frank was Anette’s boyfriend at the time and Frank and I hit it off right away and have become friends ever since.

When planning what my vacation would be for this year when Barb and her mother we going to Tahiti, I talked to Frank about visiting him for a few weeks and the rest, as they say, is history.

I’m quite sure that Frank and I will have some good times together as we have planned on not on staying in the area around Frankfurt where Frank lives but also have plans to go to a few other cities together.

Stay tuned for further updates as my Excellent German Adventure unfolds.

Baden

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Quoted in the October online edition of the National Geographic Traveller web site (see the reference to my site here under Blogs), I actually first became aware of this about a week ago when I started seeing entries in my web site’s access logs which shows connections from the National Geographic web site.

I think that this is pretty cool!

Baden

As I’ve been saying, this year is anything but normal with both of us going on separate vacations.

What makes everything worse is that we’re in this transition period where Barb is in the process of emptying her suitcase and in a few days my suitcase will come upstairs from the basement and I’ll start doing my own packing as my departure date rapidly approaches.

While on the surface this all sounds like somewhat of a minor issue, it’s actually pretty significant for us as we’ve come to learn quite well over the past 3-4 weeks since Barb started her final trip planning that it’s nowhere near the same for us to be taking separate trips as opposed to travelling together.

What we’ve really discovered is that it’s not so much the planning of the trip that’s usually a lot of the fun but it’s the planning together that makes all the difference.

To be sure, we’ve both agreed that there won’t be any separate Excellent Adventures any time soon and since we’ve already got pretty firm ideas for our vacation plans for 2007 and 2008, everything should be back on track starting with next year.

Baden

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We arrived today at the Tahiti Intercontinental where we spend our final night. We have late checkout tomorrow because our flight doesn’t leave until 11:30 pm.

We have booked a 4 hour circle island tour of Tahiti Island to see the waterfalls, a mountain viewpoint and a blow hole and Paul Gauguin museum. This will give us a quick overview of our short stay on this large island. We went into town of Papeete today to do some shopping and we saw the Paul Gauguin cruise ship in port.

We’re likely to be ordering room service tonight as Mom is tired and we will just spend the afternoon tomorrow after the morning tour by the pool or beach. I’ll be doing my final try at snorkeling in their very nice fish filled lagoonarium.

The digital camera is still not working and have tried everything that you have suggested but nothing works. I have gone through the 2 underwater cameras already that we brought with us and 2 more disposable cameras that I bought at the hotel. I’m on my 3rd one which I’ll finish tomorrow. At $25 each it’s not cheap but what can I do?

We’ll see you at the airport on Monday afternoon.

Barb