Lis and Tyler in Germany

Josh and Clarissa were hoping visiting us would mean they’d be featured on our website. I’d say it qualifies. They stayed at our house in Steinbach and enjoyed a delicious meal at our favorite place, “The Train Station.” I think Tyler and I have almost achieved “regular” status (not as in being considered regular people, but as regular customers at The Train Station, as we call it, which is the closest restaurant to us. It’s THE restaurant in Glan Munchweiler, which is 7 minutes away). There seem to be festivals very regularly throughout Germany. We happen upon them almost every time we travel. Last weekend was some wine/car festival in Bacharach on the Rhine river. This is something you’d never see in the states. People in old cars paraded through town, which is all fine and good and normal. The unusual part is the wine ceremony. The paraders stop by the “stage” where a man dressed as a wine god passes out glasses of the local Riesling to the drivers and they continue on their drive through town. Anyway, we watched for a while, posed for a photo with the wine god, and sampled some Riesling at Rick’s favorite sampling restaurant. We really are Rick junkies. In Cologne, or Koln, we went bar hopping, which is especially easy and fun for those drinking Kolsh, the local beer. It’s a light beer with a low alcohol content served in small, skinny glasses (.2 liters, to be exact. In restaurants, the glasses have a measurement line, like a measuring cup, and the glass is filled exactly to that line. Soda, water, beer, wine. Any beverage you order.). In traditional bars they bring one Kolsh after another, marking each one with a tick mark on your coaster, until you put your coaster on top of your glass signaling you’re done. If you can’t manage to balance a coaster on top of your glass, I guess you have two problem: you’re drunk and you can’t stop getting drinks.