Sideways Through Deutschland

In our constant effort to keep our minds averted from the fact that our fate, future assignment, and our location for the next 3 years is dangling tediously with the Army's Professor of Military Science board in Washington, we decided to vacate the area and occupy our minds elsewhere.

As we are entering the wine fest season here in Germany, we took a look a the local paper and found all the villages that were showing wine fests this weekend, plotted them on the GPS and did our best imitation of the movie "Sideways" travelling from winerey to winery along the Deutsch Wein Strasse.

Starting in the south and moving north along the Rhein river, we stopped at no less than 6 wineries tasting their various offering and buying the ones that tickled our fancy. By 3 P.M. we had enough bottles to fill our new winerack but that didn't keep us from stopping at the vineyard owner who was plying his wares in front of his neatly ordered rows of grapes in a stand next to the road.

Brian and Pam: Guten Tag

Herr Boos (I swear that's his name): Guten tag

Brian and Pam: Ich Sprechen Kein Deutsch (I speak no German)

Herr Boos: Nicht? (None?)

Brian and Pam: Nicht.

Herr Boos gesturing to his wares: Probe? (taste)

Brian and Pam pointing to a particular bottle: Ja Bitte (Yes Please)

Herr Boos continuing to speak in German: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Kaisersluatern, blah, blah, blah. (This is a particularly vile wine that we just we just squished with our dirty feet this morning. It contains leaves, stems, seeds, and a few rat turds, but you will taste it and buy a few bottle, take it back to Kaiserslautern and drink it because you know less than my dog about choosing wine.)

Brian and Pam: Ja, Ja. Is Gut. Ich Mochte Zwei das, und Zwei das, und Eins das. (Yes, Yes, it's good. I'd like two of these, two of these, and one of these.)
And off we go further down the wine strasse.

Ok, that might not be exactly what Herr Boos said, in fact the wine was very good.
So we eventually found ourselves at a wine fest in Bad Durkheim linked arm in arm with more Germans that spoke no English, weaving back and forth to the sound of German folksongs.

All in all, it was a good trip "Sideways" through Deutschland.