Stormy

Just a little thunderstorm that rolled through the other evening. The clouds were more impressive than the storm itself.

You can see the cloud taking over the sunny evening sky here, and the poor tree holding its own in the high winds:

Wine Tasting in the Vineyards

This past Sunday we went wine tasting at the Bürklin-Wolf winery. It was a planned excursion; we had a group of almost 30 people (most affiliated with BASF) and we went on a tour of the wine cellar that included 3 wine tastings and then we walked 5km through the vineyards while we tasted 3 more wines. We finished off the day with dinner at the oldest restaurant in the Pfalz, Gasthaus Zur Kanne.

Our guide, Susanne, had grown up working on her family's vineyard (everybody in the Pfalz seems to have a few hectares of vineyards) so she was quite knowledgeable about the wine making process. We started the tour in the pressing room where they press the grapes into juice every fall, then moved on to the cellar where they age some of their more expensive wines in big oak barrels:

There is also a room in the cellar called the treasure chamber, which is where they keep all of their really old wines. The oldest bottles were from 1893! We tried to get some pictures of them but it was hard to get them to come out as it was dark in there - and filled with spider webs! Not a fan of that.

After the cellar tour our walk began. We walked from Wachenheim to Deidesheim (so two towns south) through the vineyards. We stopped at some of the vineyards owned by Bürklin-Wolf and tasted the wine that was made from them.

Here by this tree, in the village of Forst, are the top-rated vineyards in the Pfalz. We tasted some of the wine made from them and it was amazing. Unfortunately the wine was well out of our price range at 53 euros per bottle. Glad we at least got to taste it!

The wine under that tree tastes so good because of the soil that is there. The vintners from 200+ years ago trekked volcanic soils from an extinct volcano into these vineyards and added them to the soil already there. I guess volcanic soil makes for good wine! There are also many layers of different types of soil in this area so the wine is able to pull in more minerals and more flavors from all the soils. And here's a picture of Forst ... you can see the church here, which opens up onto vineyards and even the priest here owns some vineyards!

Finally we ended up at dinner. It was a beautiful day and nice warm evening so we sat outside in the garden. The food was excellent but a little pricey. I guess you pay for the opportunity to experience the history of the restaurant.

Brussels

Last week Martin had a conference in Brussels so since neither of us had ever been there before I joined him there for the weekend and we explored the city a bit. It was a fairly low-key weekend and we just wandered around with no real plan. There aren't many touristy sites in Brussels - a few churches, a huge model of an atom, the European Parliament (which is closed on weekends so we just saw the outside of the building), and some shopping. There's a royal palace there for the Belgian royals but it's only open to the public during the month of August when the royal family is on vacation. So, we spent a lot of time relaxing in parks or in cafes in the sunshine and mild temperatures. Can't argue with that.

A few pictures of the main square at night. The main square is surrounded by impressive buildings and at night they're all lit up. Starting around 11pm the lights change colors but I didn't get pictures of that. It doesn't really get dark here until 11pm in June so you had to stay up late to see these lights!



Here are some pictures of the big park in Brussels. It was right near our hotel so we spent a fair amount of time walking around in here, plus we went for a run in here on Sunday morning and then took a nap Sunday afternoon while we waited for our train to depart.



Just a random picture of one of the main shopping streets downtown. We liked that Brussels was not too crowded ... Prague was incredibly crowded and we felt it would be annoying to live there with so many tourists constantly in the way when you try to walk down the streets.



Some pictures of the bar that set the Guinness World Record for the most beers on the menu. It's in this tiny little alley so you'd never think to walk down there and find a worthwhile bar.



Cookies! Belgian Chocolates! Belgian waffles! Belgian beer! I was sad that I didn't get to eat a Belgian waffle while we were in Brussels but there were so many good foods to eat that I just never got around to eating a waffle and I skipped the chocolates because we have a great Belgian chocolate shop in Bad Dürkheim so I figured I could get them at home.



We had a few really good beers here ... and a few that were not so good. When there are hundreds of beers to choose from you're bound to strike out a few times. Leffe of course is good but we knew that already as we'd had that a lot in Zürich ... we really liked a beer called Ingelmunster that was 11% alcohol. It was like drinking juice ... very dangerous. Thankfully beers in Belgium are served in tiny glasses so you're not drinking a liter at a time like in Germany.



A picture of the main square during the day:



A funny sign in one storefront:



A cute little park with downtown in the background. Here you can also see the "dine in the sky" crane that holds up a table with about 20 people at it eating a meal. People actually pay to eat while being held up in the sky like that. I'm sure the view is nice but it just doesn't seem like that much fun to me to be swinging up in the sky, in the wind, while trying to drink some wine.



This is a church that we visited. It was modeled after Sacre Coeur in Paris. It was enormous but very barren on the inside and it was built in 1970 so there was nothing really old or historical about it. But, it made for a nice little trip outside of downtown Brussels. There was a big park around it that we wandered around in as well.



Another thing we enjoyed about Brussels was its diversity. We discovered the African quarter of the city and had breakfast there one day plus we had dinner one night at a Cuban restaurant and lunch on Sunday was at an Ethiopian restaurant. We hadn't had Ethiopian food since we lived in New Haven so we had really missed it. The picture below is blurry but it shows our awesome Ethiopian meal. Martin ate there twice! Of course we weren't really excited about Belgian food which was why we were able to explore all the other options - the main staple in Brussels seems to be french fries. We ordered salads for lunch on Saturday and they came with french fries!



And a few pictures of the European Parliament building, where all the EU magic happens: