Baden’s Excellent German Adventure – Part 2
Touching down in Germany
My flight to Frankfurt was non-eventful but I couldn’t help but think that a long 10 hour flight like that would have been made much easier if I had someone to talk to – like Barb.
Frank ended up meeting me at the Frankfurt airport and we took the highway to his town of Sörgenloch which is 45 kilometres outside of Frankfurt.
Frank had been telling me about the stages of building of his new house for about two years and how the detailed work on the inside was very time consuming since he was doing most of the work himself. He told me that the final few weeks before I was scheduled to arrive that he was practically working night and day trying to get as much of the dozens of remaining construction tasks completed.
While Frank had a few things left to get done yet, the house really looked great and it had a nice modern European look to it that I really liked.
Not Just another Walk in the Park
Today being Sunday and with many of the stores going to be closed, we’ve decided to make an outing of the day by going for a hike in the huge forested area known as the Pfälzer Wald (pronounced: faltser vald).
Many people may have heard of the Black Forest in Germany (known as the Schwarz Wald to the Germans – wald meaning forest) but the Pfälzer Wald was not familiar to me until Frank told me about it.
We drove to a small town of Neustadt which is about 85 Kms away from Frank’s house and was the entry point to the Pfälzer Wald for us.
We hiked up a path leading to the top of one of the hills and about 60-90 minutes later we arrived at a small restaurant on the top called Lambertskreuz. The restaurant had a few dozen bench tables outside under the trees where we ate out meal of schweinbraten and knödel (known as roast pork and potato dumplings to the rest of us).
Under normal circumstances I would say that this was a fairly heavy meal for lunch but this seemed to be a typical dish being eaten by everyone else and it was quite well prepared. Since we were both quite hungry after our long hike up the hill hill, we both dug into the food energetically.
Luckily, the majority of the hike was under the shade of trees as the weather was in the mid 20’s and fairly humid compared to Vancouver so it was easy to work up a sweat (and appetite).
The interesting part was that there were about 100 people seated at the tables of the restaurant (of all ages) and I asked Frank if most of the people had driven their cars to the top of the hill but he said that everyone would have walked up just like us. This is definitely not something that I would have seen in Vancouver – unless there was a parking lot.
Let them eat cake
It may be of no surprise to most that the German people enjoy a great selection of breads, cakes and pastries. Twice now in the morning, Frank has quietly snuck out before I have gotten dressed in the morning and returned with a fresh assortment of buns which we have enjoyed as part of our breakfast. Breakfast here often includes buns and jam and Frank has noted that he usually makes his own jam with the fruits that are in season. As you might imagine, Frank is quite the Renaissance man and we both have enjoyed talking about our exploits in the kitchen.
One other dietary routine that I have been getting used to is that around 4:00 in the afternoon, we would enjoy a small piece of cake (or maybe two small pieces). This is something that I was introduced into by Barb’s mother and father several years ago.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned that Barb’s parents are German too? 😉
Monday Shopping Day
Regular readers will now that one of the favourite pastimes of ours when we get to Europe is to go shopping. As today was Monday and all of the stores were open again we took a drive into downtown Frankfurt to check out some of the stores in the shopping district known as Die Zeil.
Several blocks long and restricted to pedestrians only, the Zeil has several dozen stores in addition to several large department stores.
Being both the food enthusiasts, Frank and I started off at a WMF store which is a maker of all kinds of kitchen gadgets. Many cooking stores in the Vancouver area carry the high quality WMF products but having a whole store dedicated to them was too much to resist. We both ended up buying as few items before heading on but I can assure you that all things purchased were absolutely necessary.
By the time we had gone though a few other stores, we decided to stop for lunch and had a typical quick meal enjoyed by many of people of Frankfurt. I had a weiswürstchen (a grilled white sausage) on a bun topped with lots of senf (mustard) and Frank ordered another favorite called a fleischkäse (loosely translating to “meat cheese”, it is more of a sandwich meat that is sliced into think pieces and eaten on a bun).
Technically we were probably both committing a faux-pas by not washing down our lunch with a good German beer but for us, water was sufficient for our taste.
Tonight we plan on making some home made hamburgers at with some things that we bought at the local grocery store and generally take it easy tonight. Tomorrow I have plans to have lunch with our other friend Anette in town so I will not be spending the whole day with Frank.
Stay tuned for part 3 …
Baden

