2013 June, Dernau and Mayschoß Weinblütenfest (wine blossom festival)

[Deutschversion hier]

After J's Hamburg-visit, she left with the train to ~Ingolstadt, took some "Action Photos" of a guy making some kind of world record, and then went with a friend to pick up the motorcycle she'd rented and together they went by motorcycle through the Alps; quite an adventure :).

The plan was, that we would meet with a friend of J's, M, in Bonn, a week later, and then together take the train to Dernau (And later Mayschoß). In Mayschoß was a  Weinblütenfest. (wine blossom festival). 


It's the exact kind of thing that seemed like a good idea the first time I visited Europe, but between my ~nonextant German at the time and traveling alone and/or with someone who didn't drink, I chickened out. Knowing that J. loves wine, and finally knowing some German, it seemed the perfect opportunity to try it out.

After J. left to head south, I went south as well, but only as far as Bonn. I visited two other Mathematicians there. There was a conference in town of some sort (naturally) and because of this, it was really hard to find affordable accomodations. I ended up reserving something through Wimdu (German version of airbnb, really) in the middle of nowhere.

However, there was some lovely rain and rainbows.

Someone had recently explained to me that when you have a double rainbow, the order of colors flips:

first: end color is red. Second: first color is red

after the rain and rainbow, the sky was a cool shade of blue:

After an interesting and successful week of math, I met M. on Friday (for the first time). We found a French restaurant at the Münsterplatz and had a nice dinner. Afterwards, we found the Galleria Kaufhof and bought some chocolate and prosecco-in-a-can for J., who hadn't had anything to eat and sounded (through SMS) rather bummed out post-Alps.

J. und M. have been something like online "pen pals" for about 11 years, but had never prior to this met "in person".

An hour after J. got into Bonn, we got on our train to Dernau. It stopped in Remagen. The loudspeaker crackled and something was said. Some people got out of the train. Finally a person came walking through and told us that the train came apart in Remagen, and that we needed to get into the first piece to continue onwards. 

somewhere between Bonn and Remagen

When we arrived in Dernau, it was very clear, who was there to fetch us from the train station :) [Our hosts had offered to fetch us and our suitcases, which was very nice]

He spoke a few pieces of English and J. had tried to say a few things to him, because he was wearing a "Harley Davidson" T-shirt (and therefore is also crazy about motorcycles). After we got in to the apartment/house and shared some wine with our hosts, they opened up their garage and pulled out or uncovered motorcycle after motorcycle. Kurt (the man) and Irma (his wife) had maybe 6-8, all vintage and cool. One was a ''folding motorcycle" (Klapmotorrad), which you could fold up to put into your car and take with you on trips. Yeah. 

Kurt and J, J on the Klappmotorrad

Over wine, we all talked a lot. Turns out that Kurt and Irma are big fans of the US, showing us things they'd attached to/hung on their house, signs from Route 66, etc.  Their son has a high-up position at Lufthansa, and they have therefore a lot of opportunities to fly wherever they want :) They thought it was really awesome that J. is Native American.

Kurt on on motorcycle, J's picture. 

Weinblütenfest: I decided to wear my dirndl, because you have to wear it somewhere, and people said in this article I read that young people are more and more wearing these to fests like this. Sadly, I had failed in my goal of getting Jen a dirndl and hadn't suggested it to Marianne directly, so it was just me. I looked a bit weird, but shrugged it off at sometime. A few people were calling me the "May(schoß)königin".

On  the day of the Weinseminar, I checked bahn.de's info, which said that the relevant train (there's one train between Dernau and Mayschoß, once an hour) was cancelled. That left the bus, which we waited for. Finally, 10 minutes late, I called the bus people and they told me that it's not a real bus, it's something you have to call an hour ahead of time, a sort of Taxibus. Ok, that's stupid. So then I proceeded to call our hosts over and over and Jen and Marianne kind of tried to hitchhike. Finally, our hosts called, said they'd drive us (it's ~10 min by car, 45 min walking) and dropped us exactly where this "Wine seminar" was that we were going to attend. Jen and Marianne had managed to run into the gas station and buy us a few croissants and some coffee.


Once we arrived at the Winzergenossenshaft (wine-growers cooperative, the "oldest in the world" (1868)),  there was some delicious red wine prosecco to drink and he gave us half an hour to kill time (pee, etc) before we would leave on a hike through the vineyards. 

oldest wine-producer-cooperative in the world

The hike went walk, stop & drink, walk, stop & drink, etc. He'd said it was to be 2.5 hr s long, but was closer to 3.5 or 4 by the end.

first Weinpause

the glasses and some of the people also on our tour

Our guide, the wine-maker, said originally that the tour would run 2.5 hours, but it was much closer to 4 by the end (no including the "Wine tasting" in their cellar afterwards). 

Weinberge

Info from the tour: Something about how before the wine blight, the grape plants had no roots (he called them "blind"). After the blight they used this hybridization which involves planting two plants together in some special way. 

Our tour leader, pointing out the wrapped-together hybridization. The cover is to protect against rabbits. 

The two scourges of the plants are fungus and moths. The organic guy uses only copper, which works ok, but best at temperatures about 15C (so, better for a more southern climate) and that they leaves will then turn blue (with the oxidized copper). For moths, they use "verhütung" (contraception :) ) little pheromone packets to confuse the male moths so that they don't find female moths to mate with. He also said that the sweetness of the grapes comes from the number of leaves.

Moth contraception

At some point, we fell in with a group of people who had all come to this as a company "Ausflug" (excursion/retreat). I asked one from their group if this was normal/ok in Germany to get plastered on one of these things, since there's a lot of stories from the states of people doing that at a company party and getting fired later. They said sure, that can happen here too, but that this particular company was really like a family so different. They specialize in "feueringeneurung" (Fire-safety engineering of buildings). I had a long chat on the hike with the boss, about various things. Places one travels, Yucatan vs the rest of Mexico, etc. He said there were no mosquitos in the jungle in the Yucatan (at least during his trip) which is weird to me (maybe he was lucky?). 

Ahr Karte

Went across the valley, down, then back up to the (built in 1081, destroyed in 1704) "castle" area. (Saffenburg) Very nice view. The town butcher was grilling some amazing meat for all of us and there was also a variety of salads and more wine. I thought he was kidding in calling this guy the butcher (Seems weird to hire the butcher to grill up your meat), but when were walking around town later, we saw him outside the butcher shop. 

das älteste Faß im Keller

The hike ended with a very gravelly part, which I fell down twice during and skinned my knee. When we got back to the start point, there was yet more wine, 5 more wines in the wine cellar. Also, the wine queen and princesses of Mayschoß game to say some generically nice things about wine to us. Our "remembrance gift" was a small bottle of wine from one of the highest-producing and most-delicious years (2011). 

After the "Wine seminar" (tour +lunch + wine "tasting" for a total of 40 euro per person!) the company-group headed to dinner and we sort of napped on some benches by the water. Jen and Marianne had bratwurst and we all split a peach prosecco. Around 21:30 the company-group showed back up and we all chatted and listened to the weird mix of German pop, 80's covers and schlager the band played. We ended up missing the last train back to Dernau (where we were staying) and one of the people I was talking with (Frank, both a "fire-safety engineer" and a fireman on the side) suggested that we catch a ride with their group, which had a ginormous bus and were going in that direction anyway. We talked it over with the company's boss & his wife and they said sure! that's totally on our way. So, crises (or 45 min walk in the dark) averted. That was very nice of them. We retraced our steps (by which I mean, I remembered the name  of the guesthouse across the street and used that via google maps to find us a way back) and went to sleep :). 

Sunday was really lovely. We spent it with our delightful hosts. 

As soon as we were awake, I saw Kurt puttering around outside and he offered to put together a little breakfast for us. Sounded wonderful, and was. We sat outside with our coffee and rolls and meats and cheeses (normal German breakfast) and soaked in the sunshine and life. 

This was the day that Jen was to borrow Irma's motorcycle and ride with Kurt (on his own motorcycle) around the area, while Irma, Marianne and I went for a walk through the vineyards and area of Dernau and Marienthal. 

Dernau

Ahrtal

There's Wine-growers-cooperative in Marienthal, in the ruins of a cloister. Irma said something to the wine-maker there and afterwards he offered to give us a little mini tour through their wine-feller (in English, even) and say a bit about the history of the place. 

Either he or Irma had said that the cloister was destroyed during/after the Napoleonic wars, but not because of bombs. The French were no fans of religion, had driven off the nuns/religious people, and offered to the townspeople that they could take the stone from the roof of the church to repair their own houses (which *had* been damaged on account of the war/bombs). 

Irma had said that the person who bought the place had done a lot to transform the reputation of the wines in the region of the Ahr, from cheap wines to good wines. 

At the end of our walk we stopped in at a nice Cafe/Restaurant with a large terrace overlooking the Ahr. We sat there, ate some Flammkuchen and waited for Jenn and Kurt.

where we waited

another angle

There was a man there with a really awesome mustache and a very sweet dog. He said that this dog was bred to be a hunting dog (in England). This training lasted 2 years and at the end was an exam, which the dog failed. They were going to put him down, but the man took the dog and ran off with him.  Why would they kill the dog? They believed hunting dogs should only be used for hunting. :( Well, it was a very sweet and very beautiful dog. 

Jenn and Kurt stopped in, chatted, and then went back to the house to change out of their motorcycle clothes and also fetch Kurt's TRACTOR. Fuck yeah. :) 

[Also -- I can not explain to you how Irma pronounced "Kurt", but it was a completely different vowel than I expected. ]

Only one problem with the awesome plan -- it was Sunday, and on Sundays, you can't buy wine (or much of anything) anywhere (being that it's (rather small-town) Germany) where we were. Ah, a solution! Our delightful hosts spoke to the Chef, who fetched us two cold bottles of riesling and also glasses. . Wunderschön!

the trailer we piled into

We all piled into the trailer-thing (the word in German is exactly the word you use for "attachment", as in an Email) and were hauled majestically up the mountain. It was great. We stopped at some benches at the top, drank wine, looked at the Ahr and enjoyed life. 

While chilling, two people came by walking their horse, in the same way you might take your dog for a walk. Jenn tried to fight her fear of horses long enough for a photo shoot. :) 

We wrapped up the day with a super tasty dinner at ,,their'' Fry-shack (Frittenbude). Really, a gourmet Fry-shack. A really-o truly-o chef worked there, making fancy (yet affordable) versions of common street-ish German food.  E.g. as "side salad", we had a really nice salad of mixed greens and such. The schnitzel, which Marianne got the last portion of, looked incredible. I don't remember what I ate, but I ate it all and it was delicious.  Yum yum. 

On Monday, we had breakfast with them again and they dropped us off at our various trains. 

What a wonderful weekend. Til next year! (We decided we want to all meet again next year and wine-fest again; I suggest this second time we all wear dirndls :) )

Dernau train station platform