Vancouver, Havana, Wörrstadt – David & Debbie in Germany
7 Sep
My good friends David & Debbie from Vancouver visited Europe and decided to spend a few ( too short … ) days with me.
Great idea as I had not seen them for over a year when we last spent time together in Havana, where David has been a few times and twice with me.
Lovely to have them over and, after some days in Paris, they took the TGV and I picked them up in Saarbrücken at the French-German border.
Nothing better than enjoy half a day in that city, it was sunny, hot actually as it went up to 31C, so after some tasty coffee and a good PLPC at Salih’s LCDH we walked the old city, ordered the mandatory great Burgers next door and had lunch at the LCDH terrace, followed by more coffee and an excellent Diplomaticos Nr 2.
It was highly fortunate that the day my friends arrived we had the ANS or pharmacy cigar evening – and it was one where friends home-cooked Hungarian Goulash on pipe-stoves, a lengthy process that takes some hours for the meat to be tender. Not that we were very hungry.
Andreas was the perfect host and showed my friends around while we waited for the Burger to settle and make space for the Goulash … all the time enjoying some fine cigars and good beer.
We ended up closing the pharmacy near midnight after consuming almost a full bottle of John Bongo’s excellent Glenkinchie single Malt. Good fun !
Next day it was more like Aspirin for breakfast – that Glenkinchie can seriously make you feel wobbly 🙂
After morning cigar at the local Cafe and taking David & Debbie around my area we crossed the Rhine on the car ferry over to Rüdesheim and took the cable car up to the Niederwald monument, more commonly known as the Germania, watching over the Rhine river since 1871.
It was a short visit as Debbie left her mobile on the cable car, but after some anxious moments it came back up again, it was perfectly safe in the same cable car it was forgotten …
Not enough suffering, Debbie decided to buy some beer Steins which led to some abuse from me for taking those ugly touristy things as a souvenir back to Canada … she gave me back though and I was chastised 🙂
Making it out of touristy Rüdesheim we drove to Vollrads castle, always a peaceful place and had a long and tasty lunch of Kaiserschnitzel and a bottle of good Riesling – touristy stuff I can well live with 🙂
Back to my village and more cigars and Rose at Cafe Fritz before we had another good dinner and more cigars.
Regrettably it was a very short visit, but I have a hunch the next one will be longer …
It’s off to a week of houseboat river cruising the Alsace for them now before hitting Ireland and then back to Canada.
And then it will be Havana again ( hopefully ) for us to meet. Great place to share with good friends like David and Debbie.
Safe travels you lovely Canucks !!
Nino
