I'm starting to go native--I've been having cold cuts and sliced cheeses for breakfast lately. And speaking of food, which I seem to be doing quite a lot, we had spaghetti for lunch. "Ho hum," I hear you say, but wait a minute. The chef had a huge round of parmesan cheese with a bowl-shaped hole hollowed out in the middle. Then he scraped the sides of the hole to get parmesan shavings loose and then dumped a serving of hot pasta in the hole and swished it around to get the parmesan all melty and to coat the pasta. Then he put the spaghetti on my plate and I spooned on the sauce. What a great idea.
And they had a great coleslaw made from purple cabbage and vanilla (go figure but it tasted good), which turned my tongue deep purple so my sister took a photo of me sticking out my purple tongue, which caused both of us to go into fits of giggles--definitely not proper decorum don't you know. But when we showed the photo to the Germans sharing our table, they even started laughing. I guess you are never too old to be silly.
We are now officially on the Rhine River at Rudesheim, which is beyond quaint. They are known for their special coffee which has a healthy amount of their local Ansbach brandy, lots of whipped cream, and chocolate shavings. We felt compelled to go local as far as that was concerned.
An unexpected spectacular treat was a tour through a museum of mechanical instruments dating from the late 1700's to about 1930. The best part was that they played many of the instruments for us and I just stood there and grinned from ear to ear the whole time. It was fantastic. One large one played 19 instruments, like an orchestra. And I was allowed to play an old hand organ, the kind where a man cranked the organ on a street corner and a trained monkey collected money from the crowd. I was in heaven. Many of the pieces were substantial pieces of furniture and beautifully made.
In the afternoon we went down a 3-hour stretch of the Rhine (technically, it is the Middle Rhine) called The Romantic Way, which is a narrow, winding area of the Rhine Valley in which dozens of castles are located, left over from feudal times when Germany was just hundreds of small duchies and bishoprics. We sat on the top deck swinging our heads left and right, something like watching a tennis match. The small towns are all huddled along the shores of the canal because the hills on both sides are very high and steep This is a huge wine producing region but there is no flat land for the vineyards so they plant the grape vines up the hillsides, often on 45 degree slopes. I don't know how the grapes grow but clearly they do. There are vineyards everywhere--up the hillsides, in front and back yards. Some of the hillsides look like they've planted vines on all the goat paths. Harvesting the grapes must be a pain in the butt.
Many of the buildings are the old style half timber construction. Again, everywhere we look is another postcard scene. And tidy. And clean. Which reminds me, as a side note, that we have not encountered a single dirty or unpleasant toilet in Germany--something I can not say about traveling in the US.
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