The Yearly VW Bus Madness – A Week-End Cigar Extravaganza

The yearly madness is a one week-end yearly holiday ritual for Jos driving the vintage VW bus and having a good time with Frank and me.

The bus arrived in front of my village Café with 4 hrs of driving already on them from Belgium.
We had a bite to eat, a coffee and a cigar and we left at noon with another 5 hrs of road awaiting us.

Fortunately this time the driving was smooth and except for some light traffic jam at Heilbronn it was easy riding and we even stopped for a sandwich on the way.

Well, we also stopped to ventilate the bus and get some visibility inside the foggy cabin, as we were all three smoking cigars – Jos only in between the cigarettes he basically eats, but Frank and I seriously enjoying them.

After a quick shower at our hotel by Lake Constance we proceeded to meet Urs and Marc and were greeted at Portmann Cigars by Xiomara, an El Laguito roller on tour. Great welcome !

It was the same ritual as every visit, coffee, cigars, chat, gossip, more cigars, shopping and more cigars in the lounge before going out for dinner.

This time the place selected by Urs was Rössli, a beautiful restaurant that serves fantastic deer and wild boar dishes and has a smoking section.

There we were joined by Yannick and Koen, a welcome addition as Yannick and I had some planning to do for the upcoming Cuba vacation so the table became fully multi-lingual as Swiss-German-Flemish-Spanish and English were exchanged fluidly.

Talk about exchange – Urs was extremely kind in offering the 2013 Punch EL, a cigar I was to enjoy later in my village. I offered the Bushido and later the Serbia ER’s and smoked a custom rolled Salomones after dinner.

Not only did we smoke another cigar at the lounge but then we sat in the hotel terrace until 01 am talking, smoking, exchanging gossip, plans and information.

A very short night followed and we were back in the hotel terrace having coffee and a cigar for breakfast.

It was another coffee at Portmann’s while doing some cigar shopping with the best service in the world and smoking a small cigar.

We left Kreuzlingen for St. Gallen, followed the wrong GPS data and lost half an hour. So what – the weather was great, skies blue, sun shining, great scenery around us and we were having fun.
Another coffee and a cigar in St. Gallen, it was almost hot under the noon sun.

We drove on to Lucerne – which was a, well, let’s say it nicely an … interesting city. Yes, very close to “nice” city in my book.

That is of course ignoring the giant traffic jam to enter the damm city, finding a parking space miles away, the busloads of tourists, the on-going carnival by the lake, the masses of more tourists with selfie sticks, the horrendous prices charged for ridiculous small meals, the swimming back against the hordes of more tourists only to find the old bridge, which was the reason of our visit … closed for renovation !

OK, fortunately driving out of Lucerne was faster than driving in, so I don’t really mind. In fact, I only swore and cursed the city until we reached Germany …. Just don’t ever take me back there !

We arrived in time for dinner at Café Fritz and then we had the best cigar of the week-end, the Partagas 170 Aniversario that left us both stunned at the greatness of this vitola. Incredibly good is a big under statement.

But of course, what do we know about cigars especially when they are un-banded, un-official, un-declared, un-legal, un-production, un-real cigars that MUST be fake as they are, well, un-banded and it’s only my ignorant word and insignificant reputation that makes the crap good and experienced smokers stupid enough to share my opinion …. 😉

I’ll leave that rant to others and concentrate on what’s really important –having an ashtray in the bus.

Nino