Fantastic Europa #1

I am sitting here in Aachen, Germany freezing my a$$ off. I'm not sure if my friends landlord has cut the heat or if my friend is on a money saving mission but it is frikkin cold in here. Think typical South African winter house temperature (ie no heating). It may be colder outside (actually its probably on par with a cold Cape Town winters day ie about 10C), and of course raining, but the Europeans are meant to have this heating thing all sorted! I know it is winter and all here but I'm getting a little tired of the rain. You'd think as a Capetonian I'd be used to it by now but in Cape Town I don't have to go out, here I'm meant to be seeing the sights, and getting lost in the rain this afternoon was not so much fun. It would all be fine if

only I had some gluhwein...which reminds me of Switzerland. So let me start at the beginning, and in the beginning there was gluhwein.

Last time I was in Switzerland we somehow struggled to find gluhwein. No such problem this time I am glad to say! Of course its pretty expensive in Switzerland so I didn't indulge too often (once a day isn't often is it?). So after wishing for a white Christmas, and hearing of all the airports in Europe snowed in, I expected piles and piles of the stuff to be

lying around when I arrived but that was not the case (just as well as that would've meant my flight was delayed). However the day after I arrived it started to snow, and continued to snow for the next day and a half, which was good because by that point it was Christmas. Like the good South African I am I had brought over a vuvuzela as my uncles Christmas present. I think this is the first time the swissies saw a 'real life' vuvuzela. Tommi took to it like a boer

to a braai, and already he outstrips my blowing capabilities. Ha ha, Hinwil was treated to a whole lot of 'baaaawwp' and I'm sure they thought the soccer world cup had come again.

Soon after Christmas us kids were packed off to Klosters, a great little ski town known for famous people skiing there. Actually, it is probably originally known for its great skiing rather than the rich and famous but anyhow. I didn't see anyone rich and famous, but maybe I wasn't looking hard enough. Difficult to do when you don't have goggles and your eyes start to stream if you go to fast (and going slow is not an option). After renting some ski gear Garth and I made our way up Madrissa mountain to hit the slopes. I was quite impressed, our second run of the day was a black and we were cruising. Garth managed to break a pole with his head on one

particularly hard fall quite early on, but otherwise we managed to avoid crashing into anyone or any other thing. There was still a little bit of powder about so I had fun playing just off piste (loads of off piste area there). Unfortunately Madrissa mostly has T-bars instead of chair lifts,

which means we were in a lot of pain by the end of the day (T-bars pull snowboarders up the mountain, sideways, by one leg which is strapped into your snowboard, it is not very

comfortable, and after a few times the bruising in your crotch starts). Luckily the other nearby mountain Parsenn had many more chair lifts and we had great fun there, except for one little incident where Garth tried to snowboard off the mountain. It was on an icy hairpin bend at the bottom of the mountain (last run home) and Garth took it on the inside corner, only to have absolutely no grip and his board slide out, taking him along with it. Luckily for him they had netting at this spot (I must say there were a lot of other drop offs I thought they could have netted), which caught him as he went over the edge, leaving him trapped between the edge and

the net. I came around the corner and started laughing, until i realised that he would

have had a few metres drop into the forest below. Anyway, we made it down the same run later in the week just fine, so Garth conquered his nemesis :)

After Klosters we headed to Savognin, a small ski resort, for some more snow boarding. Glenn joined us b=for a bit here and we had quite a bit of fun playing on the slopes (which were admittedly somewhat icy after all the sun we'd been having) and eating lots of cheese. Raclette (fried cheese), fondue and mozzarella (soooooo good!). One of the highlights for the week was going ice skating on a 3 km ice walkway (how they make it I don't know as it has a few gradual

uphills as well as downhills) along a river. It doesn't sound so exciting but it was great, and through a really scenic area. We followed this up with a swim at the nearby hot baths, where we

all took a turn hopping out of the pool and rolling in the snow, before hopping back in to the warm pool (leaves your skin all tingly, quite weird actually). It was in this week that I also officially passed on the title of 'Hazard' to Garth, as I am no longer one on the slopes, but he clearly is (I had a few near misses as he tumbled down in front of me).

Next up was a short stay in Zurich with Ursi, where I caught up on a bit of shopping at the sales, before heading off to see Romina in Karlsruhe, Germany. Karlsruhe is quite a pretty little town but my favourite was our trip to Heidelberg, a nearby varsity town. The castle here is a bit broken down and I really enjoyed being able to see how thick the walls were and how people had added cladding, wings, facades, etc as the ages wore on. They also have an absolutely massive, humongous wine barrel (used to store the castles wine supply I suppose) capable of holding 220 000 l. That's bigger than our swimming pool in Knysna! Apparently it is not the biggest in Germany though- there is meant to be one barrel (or vat as they call it here) that has a restaurant inside. These people were serious wine drinkers!

On my step-fathers recommendation I stopped over for a day and a half in Trier, on the Moselle River. This is a great little town. It was originally the capital of the Roman's western empire, and continued to be an important city through the ages, so it has some great buildings from all different ages. Very picturesque. And it is also at the start (I think) of the wine region up the Moselle River. I visited a wine shop in the centre of town (run by a wine farm, ie they sell only their wine) for a quick wine tasting just before I left. I got a bit of a weird look asking about wine tasting on my own (apparently normally only groups do wine tastings) but once I had explained that I was from South Africa the manger brightened up. He tells me the wine tasting culture is not the same in Germany as in SA, and how much he'd enjoyed visiting the wine farms in SA. Needless to say a few more wines came out and I enjoyed tasting them all. This particular wine farm only cultivates Riesling, in dry, semi-dry and sweet form. A very different style to our Rieslings (if I am correct SA is also trying to take this varietal bayond its fame as a sweet wine), although he tells me that it is also very different to other wines in the region. Sadly I didn't have time to try more, as I had to catch the train to Aachen, which is where I am now.