Taken 4: Spring Break Bus - Give Me Germany

All good things must come to an end, and we did eventually have to leave the wonderful Hotel Alpina and that boy Karls. Thursday morning after one more incredible breakfast, we boarded our bus and headed to Deutschland. 

Our first taste of Germany came at a rest stop where we learned 2 things. 1. The Germans make soft pretzels with butter INSIDE them. And 2. Germans love some energy drinks. As someone who doesn't drink coffee or energy drinks, a lot of my time overseas is spent searching for a Dr. Pepper and settling for a Coca-Cola. But at this first German pit stop, I couldn't find a single soda. Everything was a water, a beer, or an energy drink. I just found that odd.

Our tour guide's father is German and as she gave us the typical "welcome to this country" spiel along the Autobahn, certain phrases seemed to be very...sympathetic to the National Socialist German Workers' Party. So that was not very cash money. What was very cash money? The bathrooms. Of all the pay-to-pee countries, I swear Germany was the most relentless.

Our first attraction was Montag Steins & Clocks GmbH in Sankt Goar. No idea what the GmbH means or if there is any relation to Heidi. I wasn't in the market for a cuckoo clock, and I don't drink, but the steins were super cool. There was even one designed for our specific tour. Emily and I agreed that it would be a really cool souvenir, a stein from Germany? Very cool. Such culture. BUT. They were like 60 euros. Which is like a million U.S. dollars. So no steins for us.

Emily was fine with that because she had her sights set on our next stop. A Birkenstock store. I am not sure if there was anything special about this particular store? It didn't seem like it. But Emily picked out a pair and I even tried some on but I am just not a Birkenstock person and it is great that I recognized that instead of forcing it.

I knew that while I was in Germany I wanted to get souvenirs for my work friends in honor of our friend Mike. Mike was from Germany, he loved beer and he loved to laugh. Mike passed away last Thanksgiving. I got us all some stein magnets and I was delighted to find a restaurant named Mike's. I know that if he was still here I would have sent this picture to our group chat and hours later Mike would respond with "cool!" or "did they serve beer?" once he left his house and went to somewhere with internet. I miss Mike.

Next was the main event, our cruise along the Rhine. We boarded the Lorelei Star and selected a table up top. It was sunny and windy and so much more beautiful than I had imagined. With the morning's souvenirs crammed into Emily's Birkenstock bag, we tried to carefully position it up against some chair legs so it couldn't easily slide off into the river. Once we really picked up speed, I moved the bag under my chair since the empty chair was obviously less of a firm foundation. And it was an embarrassing 15 minutes later that I realized we could just put the souvenir bag IN the empty chair.

Marysol pointed out a lot of castles and while I got pictures of them, they are VERY difficult to identify via Google Images. So that page of the scrapbook has a lot of question marks. But the castles, whatever they're called, were beautiful and the boat cruised along so slowly as to not impede on the photo shoots.

After the cruise we were treated to an exclusive ice wine tasting at St. Severus, named for the patron saint of brooding. Ice wine is so special because it has to be harvested when the temperature is negative 7. I forget if that is Celsius or Fahrenheit but either way it's cold. Ice wine is primarily made in Canada and Germany and there is less and less every year because apparently temperatures don't get that low often but you could have fooled me because I woke up in 40 degree weather 2 weeks ago. In North Carolina! In October! That's supposed to still be practically summer.

Because it is harvested in freezing temperatures, the sugars crystalize and that makes the ice wine really sweet and that is a polarizing quality in a wine. I tried the red, white, and ice varieties they offered us and I really have no helpful feedback. It all had alcohol. I don't like alcohol. But this was a once in a lifetime experience and I do like those.

From St. Severus we traveled to Boppard, a charming little village with a concerning collection of Santa gnomes, some of which were in the act of urinating. But the rest of Boppard was cool. Then it was time to head to the hotel for dinner and laying down, 2 of my favorite activities. At dinner we were joined by a Dominican couple from our group. Perhaps emboldened by the brief Spanish conversation we had earlier in the day when I asked the gentleman if I could "tomar una foto de cerveza" to document the massive size of beer cans in Germany, they asked if they could sit at our table. And we were all disappointed by what followed. 

I'll say it. My Spanish is impressive and that's on Cindy Bredenberg. But I am best at reading, then writing, hearing and then speaking. Also when I speak Spanish I am always living in the moment because I can't be bothered with verb tense. Since this couple wasn't interested in becoming pen pals, our conversation was limited. I had a real aha! moment and was prepared to dazzle them with my musical theater knowledge, but these guys had never heard of In the Heights, even though at this point it was already a pelicula and not just a musical de Broadway. You can't say I didn't tratar.