Shanghai, Pharmacy, Portmann – Mr Plastic’s Road Trip

Let’s clarify first – of course it wasn’t a road trip from Shanghai to Frankfurt, Web used the classic Lufthansa B-747-400 for that …

and why is Web called Mr Plastic – well, being a big city boy he is used to whip out his credit card ( or mobile phone ) to pay for every little thing.

Try to do that in a small village and you will receive lots of laughs … 🙂

Other than that, all went extremely well. We had only met through the Internet and with Web being in Europe quite frequently, I suggested he drop by for a cigar at the pharmacy cigar events.

He agreed and so I picked him up early Sunday morning. As he told me he likes pork and Sauerkraut being a “northern Barbarian” I took him to Frankfurt where he indulged in a Schweinehaxe or Pork Knuckle with the cabbage. First cigar we smoked was a Lancero before I drove Web through downtown Frankfurt and into the village for a nap at Cafe Fritz.

He attended the ANS night and couldn’t believe how relaxed and friendly people were. All about good fun, food and cigars.

He is used to fly around Europe so I suggested driving to Switzerland – his destination country – as an alternative to flying.

He agreed as he loves to improvise and told me it would be his first road trip in Europe.

So that is what we did, and it was a glorious day to do it, blue skies, sunny weather and not much traffic.

Now, having Alonso as my second family name I managed to do the trip in under 3 hrs. Not bad on a weekday….

We arrived at Portmann Cigars to the usual and legendary first class service and hospitality by Mr Portmann and his son Marc.

While I had a RASS Web went for a Vegas Robaina – along with some coffee to get the adrenaline down.

We selected some nice boxes under the excellent guidance of Marc and then went for a quick and fine dinner at my usual Thai dirty spoon on the German side of the border.

It was then back to the Portmann cigar lounge where we enjoyed good conversations and both received a Portmann 35th and 45th Anniversary stick. Cannot thank Mr Portmann and Marc enough for making us feel so welcome – they truly went far out of their way to make us feel comfortable.

The next day Web took the train to Gstaad along with his 3 Jumbo cases and we said “see you soon” as he has promised to come back, both to the pharmacy ANS and to Portmann.

So, see you soon Mr Plastic Fantastic 🙂 and thank you for the visit !

Nino