Deutschland Part 2

Once again I spent a lovely weekend in Germany with my friends Sabine and Niklas. As always, it was great to get away from London for a weekend. It was especially nice to get the chance to see Germany at Christmas (read: Weihnachten). Germany is, as one may expect, very German and Christmas is especially. On Friday evening after a delicious meal we headed to the town square in Saarlouis to walk around the Christkindl Markt. Although a rather small market, it was really cool and I had my first Gluehwein which was surprisingly good and rather potent.

On Saturday after sufficient vacation-sleep-in Sabine and I drove to Trier. Trier is Germany's oldest city and is very pretty. The market here was much larger and full of people. We ate Dampfnudel mit Vanillesoße und Kirschen and it was awesome. Here's a picture of it:

So, we ate, we saw sights that were really old and then we went home and out to dinner with some friends of Sabine's at Margaretenhof which was just as wonderful as last time.

Sunday was similarly great. Helga (Sabine's mom) had some friends over from her karate class for breakfast. I was very nervous to speak German all weekend around so many natives. I'm very out of practice. After breakfast we went to Saarbrücken and I got to drive. I can now say I drove on the Autobahn! Saarbrücken is the capital of Saarland and is a gorgeous little city. We looked at an old church and the Schloß, both of which were really cool and very impressive considering they were completely destroyed in WWII and rebuilt to be as they were. The castle had an invisible art display outside that I was very enamoured with. Apparently a number of students from the local art school began stealing the rocks that made up the public square in front of the castle's main enterance. They always replaced them with others while they did their work so noone knew anything was missing. Slowly, they carved the name of a Jewish cemetary in Germany onto the underside of each stone and then replaced it in front of the castle. The result is that everything is exactly as it was before their art except that no people know and hopefully think a bit as they walk. The hidden nature of the names is just so powerful; everyday people walk over their history and give it little thought but now this "display" kinda forces the question of what became of so many nameless, erased people and histories. The names of dead more-or-less, inscribed in stone and present in thought yet hidden from sight. Anyway, I think it's a fuckin' amazing idea.

Saarbrücken's Christmas market was also huge and we ended up there at just the right time to see der Weihnachtsman (Santa Claus/Father Christmas) fly over the market and give a speech to the crowd. More local food followed at a brewery before we went back to Saarlouis. It was by all accounts a fabulous weekend with good friends.