Well I'm back, jetlagged and probably 10 pounds heavier than when I left from all the German food & beer.
No castles sadly, but Constantine's palace in Trier, yes...and a couple of chapels in the wilderness of the Moselle Valley. Lots and lots of reisling, enormous piles of meats and cheeses, afternoons spent wandering from one cafe to the next trying to stay out of the cold...
Trier, Germany is a town where no one digs cellars because the historic preservation laws say that if you find Roman ruins, your property immediately goes onto the National Historic Treasures registry & you're not allowed to tamper with it. A building a half block down from our hotel was decimated by a fire about six months ago. They tore it down, and started digging a place for a new basement & foundation, but had to stop when they uncovered what looks like part of a Roman arcade--beautiful brick arches. It's surrounded by chainlink fence now, and it's weird as hell to look down into a modern building site and see Roman ruins. Finding Roman coins is so common around there you can buy a 1500-year-old penny for about $2.50!
Plus, there's a restaurant where you go in, sit down at a long picnic table, say
Hünchen, bitte and they bring you half a roast chicken, a plate of farmhouse bread, and a basket of wetnaps. You eat with your hands and try not to drop your glass of reisling when your fingers are greasy. It's
fabulous! We shoved roasted meat into our mouths and recited "Old King Cole" and toasted each other and giggled
a lot.
Then there was the
bière de mars in Strasbourg--March Beer--the first spring ales. Absolutely enormous mugs of this wonderful light sweet ale, accompanied by
tarte flambée, which is a sort of flatbread pizza, only instead of tomato sauce and cheese it's covered in creme fraiche and this stuff called
lardons, which is basically like tiny strips of bacon fat. Sounds gross, tastes terrific. After the
bière de mars and
tarte flambée, there was the slightly drunken staggering through the medieval streets of Strasbourg, and the gazing in awe at the soaring tower of the cathedral.
The cathedral itself (which we visited
before the beer and
tarte was intense--immense, High Gothic, and as we wandered through it trying not to strain our necks looking at the arches of the ceiling and the stained glass windows, the afternoon service for the Benedictine monks of the nearby abbey started, and the whole place was filled with the sound of Gregorian chant. We wandered and marveled and all the time this unearthly music wafted around our heads. We never did find their private chapel, though we looked for it. Instead we went and watched the hour strike on the astrological clock (which only had five planets on it). The bell of the clock was held by a skeleton, and the strikers were people in various styles of dress, depicting different classes and jobs.
Anyway, it was huge fun, and while I'm not sorry to be back at work,
, I am glad to have internet (and thereby KW) access again!
, so if you don't hear from me in person till March, know that I'm with you in spirit! I'll try to check in, but it'll depend on them pesky furrin intrynet caffays. Don't burn down the Watch while I'm gone!
