Münster

Lazing on a sunny afternoon

DSCN3072We decided a bit of a sleep in was in order followed by breakfast on the deck of our hotel (with sunglasses, coffee and plenty of water). Then it was time for a leisurely stroll to the mall to grab a USB for the wedding videos and to check out the sandcastle building comp in the square outside the hotel. The first one was a sandcastle of the Burj al Arab, the Dubai landmark that keeps featuring in my life. There are a number of odd places that seem to have a repeating presence in my life – Goulburn, Germany and the Burj Al Arab (needless to say I appreciate the second two more than the first). We discovered a produce. Market in the town square and wandered through marvelling at all the different deli items on sale. Dan was beside himself when he found a cart selling sugar coated cashews.

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We went back to the room, packed up all our stuff and missed the train that would get us back to the home of our gracious hosts by 2pm as promised. We arrived about 3pm or so by the time we pulled our luggage from the station to our hosts’ abode. The main purpose of the afternoon gathering was to spend some relaxed time together after the big day but it also served as a way to consume some of the many leftovers from the wedding (including quite a collection of beer). It was then time for some street cricket. In true Aussie barbecue style, it was mostly the men who ventured out into the heat to throw a plastic cricket ball at plastic stumps, while the women (sensibly) stayed inside in the cool. A nice afternoon was had by all and once things started to fade, we bid our farewell, with a lift to the station from one of our hospitable hosts, and continued on our journey to Duisburg to meet the midnight train to Munich. (The Punch Line – Mighty Mighty Bosstones – the gentlemen of ska (and one of Boston’s best exports) are always good for a late night listen. And a good dose of skanking when you see them live.)

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Nice day for a white wedding

DSCN3125The wedding day was always going to be about the wedding and in order to get there by train we had to leave the hotel by around 11am. That meant the hotel breakfast with bottomless coffee to get over the 3am phone call and time to get ready. I now understand why Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop requests an iron and ironing board in her rider. Our quite comfortable hotel room that looked like it was designed to host business guests didn’t come with an iron and for some reason it seemed to be the most difficult thing we asked for. Eventually Dan got his shirt ironed and we headed off to the train station. About 200 metres down the road I realised I had left my phone with the deutsche bahn train app and the GPS in the room. Dan went back to get it. Unfortunately we didn’t discover until we were at the train station that the battery for Dan’s camera was also in the room.

A short wait at the train station in Dülmen and a kilometre stroll and we arrived at Renaissanceburg Lüdinghausen, the venue for the wedding. It was easy to see why they had chosen the venue – A castle set on an island surrounded by a moat and lots of greenery. Now that’s definitely not something you see at an Australian wedding – a castle! Not a real one anyway – I imagine members of Medieval societies probably find old sandstone buildings to act as appropriate backdrops for photos and have their actual wedding in a park. Of course this wedding wasn’t themed (even though a few star wars references made their way into the ceremony.

This is the first German wedding I have attended (despite having been invited to one in Bonn many moons ago when I could barely afford to go to Yass for such an event). This one was very traditional (unlike, I imagine the Bonn one to have been). I was looking forward to the experience. The arrival of the bride and groom on foot across the moat was quite beautiful and there was no traditional giving away o the bride. I didn’t have a chance to ask whether that was tradition or just a choice. The civil ceremony itself was quite different to similar weddings in Australia. The personal part was lovely and the celebrant said a few words about the bride and groom and about marriage. The bride and groom said I do (only once and then they kissed and we thought it would be all over but no. The officious German registry office meant that they both had to agree to about a million clauses in the wedding contract that seemed to mostly about whether or not the bride changed her name and this involved repeating their dates of birth and where they lived about two or three times. It was the first bilingual wedding the celebrant had conducted but I don’t think that was what made the ceremony feel so officious. Like all weddings though it was a chance for the bride and groom to declare their love for each other and make a promise to each other and it was truly heartfelt. (Wonderful Life – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The gothic overtones of Nick Cave often mean that the undying love and devotion that is at the core of many of the band’s tunes is lost. Like this beautiful number that somehow feels appropriate to listen to while writing about a wedding.)

When the guests left the room where the wedding was conducted, they were handed a white heart shaped balloon and asked to attach an addressed message to it with the how that it would be taken away on the wind and when it landed, be returned to the bride and groom. We all stood together and let the balloons go and they floated away like a hundred heart shaped clouds against the blue sky. Like an Australian wedding, it was then time for the guests to be kept busy between the ceremony and the reception. There was champagne served to celebrate the nuptials but also (because it is Germany) it was time for coffee and cake, which included plates of cookies and the cutting of the wedding cake – a task usually left until the end of an Australian wedding when everyone is so full of booze that the last thing they want is fruit cake with marzipan. The cake had three different layers – one of which was a German style cheesecake – perfect!

After photos, it was time for the reception. Many of the elements of the reception were the same as a traditional Australian wedding, like the heartfelt speeches with just a touch of humour (the Australian ones of course but there was a touch of humour in the German ones as well). In order to ensure all guests experienced the speeches without the need for an interpreter on hand, the speeches were translated into German or English as needed. And like most weddings, there were the tablemates you didn’t know before the wedding. In this case, cousins of the bride and their young kids – one from Berlin and another (and her husband) who run a local dairy farm. The bride had overestimated my rudimentary German skills but fortunately our tablemates spoke English well and made a real effort to ensure we felt included in the conversation. (Josie – Blink182 – One of my favourite pop punk ditties about love. Blink really encapsulate teenage love into three minutes and very few words.)

The menu (which featured a star wars photo where the bride and groom’s heads had been photo shopped in to replace Luke and Leia and their fur child to replace Chewbacca) was where the two traditions met. The first course – Wedding Soup, served in a tureen from the table is a traditional German wedding first course. It is like a chicken and vegetable consume with white cheese cubes and what appeared to be a gnocchi like pasta. It was delicious. The main course was a buffet that included German-style roast beef and gravy, chicken and pork schnitzel, kangaroo fillet, creamed potatoes, fried potatoes, carrots and greens, a salad with the most delectable yoghurt dressing ever and a range of vegetarian options. There was more food than could be eaten. But it was definitely worth waiting for the traditional dessert – Gentleman’s crème – a lush light creamy mousse with flecks of chocolate and rum. It was accompanied by a more traditional Australian chocolate mousse. The meal was finished with an aperitif. A traditional one in a glass – 40 per cent proof and really bitter – what I had and little bottles of other spirits – which Dan had. Wine (red and white) and beer was served throughout the afternoon and evening and imbibed heartily by all.

After the dinner and speeches, the bride changed and she and the groom emerged for their dance – it started as a traditional waltz but quickly turned into a more modern dance they had choreographed. Apparently this has become a bit of a tradition in German weddings. Hopefully it won’t catch on in Australia – way too ambitious for my dancing ability. The dancing ability of the guests was tested later on when all Australians were requested to dance to AC/DC – now head banging is a dance style I have mastered (well maybe not mastered…) My broken foot planted firmly on the ground, I did manage to move to the music a bit and (reluctantly) remained on the dancefloor for the Men at Work (not so) classic complete with million dollar kookaburra flute riff. To reward ourselves for dancing, or not, a fabulous cheese course was served. Not that I needed to eat anything more but it was one of the biggest and most delectable spread of cheeses I had ever seen.

It was a beautiful day and a fabulous evening but we bid the bride and groom farewell and headed off into the night around midnight before our coach turned back into a pumpkin (or at least before the last train left the station). After a ten minute train ride, we sat at the platform at Dülmen for about 45 minutes but despite the late hour on the open air platform at a non-attended station felt completely safe. In fact I think we were more at risk of being blown away by the freight trains passing us at a couple of hundred kilometres an hour. When we arrived back in Münster, it was amazing how many people we saw riding their bike home from a night out at 2am in the morning – I really need to get bike fit so I can do the same. (Spell – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – a beautiful tune about falling in love.)

We come from a land down under

DSCN3106Dan rose early and went for a jog around the trail we had seen the day before – to add another destination to his world tour of runs. He said it was a really pleasant run because of the shade but the previous days’ rain, the leaf litter was very mulch like and also very slippery. No injuries, although the floor was covered in muddy footprints. We had a fairly relaxed day starting with a simple breakfast from a bakery on the side of the plaza – the Germans love bread and whole grain and rye bread in particular and these bakeries provide a very cheap (and delicious) way to start or end the day (or indeed interrupt it for lunch. Our breakfast cost less than 10 euros and included a delectable egg sandwich a cherry Danish, a hotdog baked in a roll, a second hot pastry, coke, coffee and bottled water! Though carb laden – what German meal isn’t – it felt healthier and fresher than the other breakfast we had been eating. These days I am almost proficient at using German wasch salons but this one actually came with a helper to provide the washing powder and help you with the machine – only problem was she spoke only German which actually made everything harder. Eventually we got there and also got the washing done. Incidentally, the wasch salon had also caught the hipster infestation with its own palette furniture out the front.

After a suitably relaxed wander around town in the afternoon, we jumped a train to Dülmen, a little village not far from Münster. The purpose of our trip (or at least the excuse for it was a wedding. A long-time friend was marrying his German fiancé and we couldn’t help but come to Germany to experience a real German wedding. In keeping with the theme of the wedding (and the marriage really) the bride-to-be’s parents invited all the freeloading Australians who had travelled to their home for a barbecue – a German barbecue with some of the most delectable treats ever – including a bomb – well seasoned and sauced meatloaf wrapped in bacon. This was washed down with (quite a bit) of German beer and wine. It wasn’t the food that was the star of the evening – the bride’s parents were gracious and welcoming hosts and entertained the rowdy bunch of Australians until well after 10pm. It was a pleasant evening in their beautiful home in the small village – in Australian terms more the size of a regional centre. Many of the houses in the neighbourhood were duplexes with small yards but common playground areas for children. And while they look small, most are two stories with extensive basements below. Our hosts had redecorated since their children had grown and their backyard was an entertainer’s paradise with no grass to mow but a beautiful well-tended garden full of sculptures made by our host. (Cherry Poppin’ Daddy Strut – A bit swing standard, a bit Dixieland, this is a nice surprise from the modern day officianados of swing and reminds me how much I want to visit New Orleans.

It was a pleasant evening and a nice way to meet before the big day. We bade our farewells about 10pm and caught a train back to the hotel to get a good night’s sleep. At least that was the plan. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how many times you explain that you are going overseas, there is always someone who doesn’t quite get it. I got the phone call that shouldn’t have happened at 3am and it made me a bit of a wreck for the following day.

 

Lessons in the importance of the umlaut

DSCN3107We awoke early on our last day in Frankfurt had breakfast and took a walk to the historic area. Clearly one of the main tourist traps, there was a queue of air-conditioned buses lined up along the street, a gaggle of tourist groups in the square and a couple of brash Eastern European newlyweds who drove right up to the door for photos. We took a few snaps and headed for the Arts and Culture gallery – the architecture looked more impressive from the photos – and headed back to the Hauptbahnhof to catch a train to Münster, our base for the next three days. The train wound its way back up the coast along the well-worn path of the past few days to Koblenz although this time we kept going. I got closer to the ducks of Bonn this time than ever before as we passed through the former capital on our way north. Unfortunately, even though it was bucketing down as we passed through, no actual duck sightings. It does look like quite an attractive town though. Dan was getting really excited about the one things he had planned to do – visit Germany’s biggest tank museum. When we arrived in Münster, Dan started researching how to get there and it turns out the tank museum is actually in Munster not Münster, which was about 300 km away. He did get over the disappointment after a while.

Münster on the other hand was a pretty little town – about the same population as Canberra and a heap of students as well. It was extremely pretty though. The old town had been cleaned up and modernised with luxury stores in old buildings and there are about 1001 churches throughout. There is a riding/walking track that circles much of the old town and it is like an avenue beautifully shaded with trees. There is greenery everywhere which looks fabulous against the older building. And bicycles. Münster is apparently the bicycle capital of Germany and it shows. Everywhere you look there are people getting themselves from point a to b on a city bike –young old , students, professionals and most of the old city centre isn’t accessible to cars. It is a delight to walk around in. There is very little reference to some of the sordid history of the town though – this is where the Anabaptists set up shop and were subsequently defeated but there is no sign of any of that save for the cages they were strung up in that are still attached to the church spire. (The Man at C&A – Ballistic Allshorts – while nothing can replace The Specials’ original, my fave 90s ska core outfit go a bit trad ska on this number and somehow it works.)

After checking into our quite comfortable hotel, we took a short walk around town, principally to check out some noise cancelling headphones – the Sony pair I had paid $50 for out of a vending machine at JFK had finally bitten the dust. I haven’t yet bought a replacement pair but am leaning towards the Philips offering. By this stage we had enough and decided it was time for dinner. The knowledgeable trip advisor app scored gain and pointed us in the direction of a very popular Gasthaus. The service was fabulous and the food quite exceptional. We shared entrees of delectable deep fried camembert (a secret indulgence of ours) and some locally produced salami. For mains Dan went with schnitzel (again) although this time it was veal. I had a superb dish of pork medallions with bacon and baked apple slices. Mine came with one of my fave German dishes ever – fried potatoes and Dan’s came with a warm potato salad, which tasted like it was mixed with onion and some sort of vinegar based salad dressing – not at all what I expected. The fried potatoes were fabulous though. After dinner (it was by this stage 10pm – that northern summer twilight really does fool you) we headed back to the hotel and crashed.