Rhineland and Reisling

Ok, well, it certainly was a surprise weekend - never in a million years would I have guessed we were off to the industrial heartland of Germany...But Frankfurt Hahn awaited us with blustery arms (90 mile an hour head winds made for a white knuckle landing) and we arrived rather ashen faced but ready to see what we could make of this interesting part of Europe.

Over the next 3 days, we explored the Mosel region of Rhineland which was most pituresque; lots of vines growing down steep banks of the Mosel river (tributary to the Rhine, don't you know) and the odd Chitty Chitty Bang Bang castle nestling in the fertile hills. We discovered that most of Rhineland goes to the Alps for January, and failing to find anything open where we could eat or drink, we ended up in Luxembourg, rather weary and wondering where the party was. Inspired by the idea left by his secretary, Hugo managed to find us a very smart room at a Spa in the countryside bit of Luxembourg (for such a small country, I found it quite sweet that they've divided it into 4 regions) at Mondorf Les Bains. MORDOR more like. We had found Middle Earth or whatever scary part of the Lord of the Rings that Mordor is. Once a beautiful spa town with naturally hot water flowing out of the healing rocks, Mondorf les Bains is now a true corporate monolith with hundreds of miles of underground corridors and the ominous 'treatment rooms' with toweling robed people silently padding their way up and down, whispering in hushed tones, startled by our clothed figures. Our stay included any exercise class we felt like, and in the absence of much else to do, we signed up for pretty much everything which has left us feeling rather beasted, but definitely a lot healthier and fitter for it. Following a couple of kickboxing / Abdokiller work outs, we flopped into the SPA bit underground, where we could swim outside in 38 degree water, steam rising off the water into the cold cold night. It was rather nice until we were approached by a whale of a naked swimmer, breasts flopping about with each stroke and if that wasn't bad enough, the rest of her was naked too. It was round about then that we noticed we were the only ones wearing swimming costumes. In fact, there were 'no swimming costumes allowed' notices all over the flipping place. So, we got naked too.

We even tried going into Luxembourg for Saturday night to 'hang out' and see the City of Culture 2007 (big blue mooses everywhere advertising this). Well, for a city of Culture, it has a bit of work to do. Other than finding a very wierd performance in a theatre where a magician was hounded by a woman of goodness and a woman of evil (i.e. one dressed in black PVC the other dressed in a floppy white dress) kept putting them in boxes and cutting them in half amidst green strobe lights, outside, there was not a single person out on the streets Our footsteps echoed to the silent pulse of this very unvibrant city. It was almost as if everyone had heard that Brussels was the place to be that night and there was a 100% evacuation half an hour before we got there. Or maybe I'm just paranoid and everyone was feeling broke after Christmas and were staying in with the telly. I don't know.

So, I'm back for my last night before heading off, having forgotten to do one or two key things (e.g. notify inland revenue that I'm AWOL until May etc) and I'm feeling slightly sick at what lies ahead. I called one of the other guys on Raleigh who's landing inSan Jose half an hour after me, and after asking if I was feeling nervous, and me agreeing, he howled with a mad laugh for about ten minutes until my MD walked in and I had to hang up.

Next posting: from Matapalo (look it up on googlearth)

Besos