Neustadt Weinstraße - Germany (Deutschland) -Part 1

I gather it would take some time before I come to grip with the fact that it may only be an hour's flight from Amsterdam to Hamburg (and even less still to other countries within Europe), the fact is, all these flights are still classified as international flights, hence requiring the standard 2 hours before departure time checking in. I can see most of my friends back home reading this would by this stage start shaking their heads and think that they know what's coming.

Despite having past statistic going against my favour, I'm happy to actually announce that despite checking in about 40 mins before the departure of my flight, I actually made it thankyouverymuch!

I was not stopping in Hamburg however as through my many international business connection overseas (sounds better than saying from a geeky badminton website), I was only passing Hamburg on my way to Germany's wine region, Neustadt Weinstraße where Mark and Tanja live. Lucky for me, my visit coincides with their wine tasting festival and also Tanja's visit to Heidelberg, one of Germany's more famous region (aka tourist mecca). I must say despite warnings from my trusty Lonely Planet guide book regarding how Europeans differ so much in terms of personalities and customs based on their countries of origin, I certainly was still taken aback by how much this is the case. While most Dutch people speak fluent English and often on first point of contact, they would start a conversation with you in English, the more serious and proud Germans will address you in their native tongue first and upon receiving blank puzzled looks from you, they would then kindly switch to English, often much to your relief!

It was the problem with communication that saw my stress level suddenly shooting up at warp speed after 2 days of the leisurely pace and life in Amsterdam. It was with much difficulty before I managed to find a bus that would take me from the airport to the central train station in Hamburg. The next mission arrived when I had to explain to the ticket seller at the train station as to where I was heading. Neustadt means 'new city' and besides Neustadt Weinstraßen, there's all these other Neudstadts in the wine region which meant I had to say the full name of this place. After trying very much to get the right pronounciation and intonation right, spitting at the poor woman behind the ticket counter in the process, I wrote it down instead and much to both myself and the lady's relief, she nodded happily and issued me with my ticket, showing the train leaving from Platform 13.

Checked the time when I got to Platform 13, ahh, with 10 minutes to spare, excellent. Feeling relaxed for the first time, I began to look forward to my train ride and texted Mark to advise that I would depart at 18:30 (Germans tell time in 24 hour system) and arrive at 23:30. When the train finally arrived, I had trouble finding the wagen (car) number. After a few minutes of panic, decided to harass the impatient looking conductor who quicky waved me out of the train with a dismissive 'nein,nein, wrong train, nein!' I got off and went to ask what looked like the station staff (with red buret that made them looked more like first aid officers than train station staff). I was then informed that apparently, 5 mins before the train arrived, it was announced (only in German of course) that my train has switched from platform 13 to 14 and the train had just left, he said smiling at me, obviously not paying attention to my hissing and murderous looks I threw him. I was told to get my ticket changed to the next train (the last one for the day). So had to march back up several long stairs and dragging my backpack which was getting heavier by the seconds, all the way back to the ticket counter to get a new ticket. This time I was informed that the train will be on Platform 14. Got there and waited but this time, I was 'slightly' more cautious, checking every 3 minutes with the red buret rodents, err I mean station officers on whether there has been any more change in platforms. In fact, 2 minutes before the train arrived, that was what took place, another change, my train now arriving at Platform 13. This time thankgoodness I asked and was able to finally get on the right train. The rest of the trip remained uneventful which of course was a welcomed change.

Arrived in Neudstad at 12:50am and was so grateful to get off the train and meet Mark and Tanja for the first time. Within the first 5 mins of meeting Mark, I had to readjust my impressions of Germans as the serious and quiet type. Mark has more energy and life than the Energizer bunny, more so than even Steve Irwin (perhaps Mark got it from him when he and Tanja went to Australia for 3 months in a cycling tour). Tanja is more quiet and shy, also beautiful and sweet, with a welcoming smile that quickly put me at ease and my reservations of intruding on their lives at rest.They live in a very lovely one bedroom flat about 5 minutes walk from the town centre. We retired early as we were all tired and that night, I slept like a baby for the first time since my trip, perhaps partly due to exhaustion and jet lag, but partly also due to not sharing a dorminatory with 5 other party-crazy 'flying pigs' in Amsterdam.

23rd September

Mark took me into their local township for a quick look around of reasonably famous buildings, restaurants and the fountain full of lil statues of Elwedritsche-brunnen, these rather strange imaginary creatures that has a body of a chicken but with human heads and body parts. It is customary during wine harvest season for locals to have a party during the night where they bring bags and a special 'shiny' bait to try and lure and capture these creatures that are rumoured to be hiding between the grape trees. One group of the party will be walking down from one end of the vineyard,carrying lanterns and making loud noises to trap and move the creatures going towards the other end of the vineyard where another group of the party are waiting with the big bag 'trap' containing the shiny items to lure these elwedritsche-brunnens. Of course, the outcome#s always the same where everyone will boast later about this most mangificent and special brunnens that somehow 'got away'.

The Enchanting Elwedritsche-brunnen

A bit of background info. Neustadt is a wine town with nine neighbouring wine villages (about 5,000 acres of vine area) surrounding it and together, they are a home to a population of 56,000 people. It looks over the fertile valley of the Rhine (river) from an elevation of about 100-200 metres above sea level. The oldest town records date back to 1245 with the foundation stone for the first building in the town being laid in 1368. Of course I had to research this information myself no thanks to Mark and Tanja's "we live here all our lives, but don't ask us the history".

The locals were just starting to get ready for the wine tasting festival that was to start in a few days. It was really warm and balmy as we walk around and saying 'tag (g'day) or morgen (morning)' to the friendly locals. We had to cut our tour short to go meet Tanja who would be taking me to Heidelberg, which was about an hour's train ride away. This town by the Neckar River boasts of the infamous magnificent castle, Heidelberg Schloss built in the 12th century but never got finished and parts of the castle were constantly destroyed either in battles or due to poor building structure. Took some great pics, had an ice cream and then went back to Neudstadt to go watch Mark play badminton in a local league.

The garden located within the castle

View of one of the castle walls

View from another 'destroyed' portion of the castle wall

Views of the Neckar River from the castle's highest point

24 September

This was a nice lazy day for us. Spent a bit more time to get to know Mark and Tanja. Mark's currently studying towards his Electrical Engineering diploma and Tanja brings home the bacon working as a database administrator for a big beauty/healthcare store. Mark and I then went into the local town to see what the weekend Market has to offer. I offered to cook Mark and Tanja my famous Malaysian curry and so we went to the only local chinese grocery store to get the ingredients and for some reason, I tried hard not to crack up laughing seeing a Chinese guy speak German..hard to explain but really funny!
It's like watching a german dubbed kung fu movie or something.

The market was busy that morning with people getting their local fresh produce and stopping to chat with friends over a cup of coffee at the nearby cafe, very relaxing atmosphere indeed. Mark then explained to me the difference between Kiwis/Australian customer service vs Germany's. Basically, vendors in Germany don't always believe that customer's always right, in fact, they often go out of their way to make you feel like you're begging or being a nuisance for wanting something from them, this is more apparent within the civil service like in post office due to the state owned services of the past.

In the evening, Mark and I had a quick game of badminton before he played in another local league. I was cheering him on when I kept getting strange looks from the other people there. Mark later explained another German etiquette to me. Apparently, these are reserved people who don't like showing too many emotions and they frown upon others that do and in fact, cheering on your team mates in a sports context may be regarded as being rude and uncalled for, go figure...

Later that night (Saturday night), we all went out to the Market again to sample the "neu wien" of this year's harvest. There were all sorts but my favourites are two; the first was rather a sweet concoction that taste like any ordinary grape juice, so easy to drink, but whoa, underestimate its alcoholic potency at your own peril ladies and gentlemen. I was gigglish by the third or fourth sip. The other favourite was called Rieslingschorle which has 2/3 of Riesling wine and 1/3 of sparkling mineral water so it taste like a 'diet wine' and the bubbliness gave it that champange taste. It was a good night as being perhaps the sole Asian girl there, I was a favourite target for drunken marriage proposals and before you start having a cow mom, no, I didn't accept any......yet!

Since being here, I've been trying to learn a bit of German but I must say it's a language that is not catered for the short asian tongues. Each time I have to pronounce the words, it's always accompanied by spits and I often felt like I was trying hard to spew my guts out to get the gutteral sound right. Some of the words I've learnt so far:

1. Riesling miesling (german slang for drink up man and no worries)
2. Papa slumpch (Papa smurf and I refuse to divulge how this came about!)
3. Böser mann / frau (bad man / woman)
4. Tschüs (informal goodbye)
5. Briefmarke nach Neuseeland (A stamp to NZ)
6. Ich liebe dich (The 3 words feared by most men..I love you, surprisingly, though, many of them seemed to forget this fear on the wine tasting night)

Part Two to follow....