Another week down. No big adventure to report this week. Next week, though we are traveling to Frankfurt, Germany. Julie has to be there most of the week for work. So I am skipping two days of my German lessons to travel. We leave Zürich on Friday, and I return on Monday. That way we at least have two days to explore.
We spent Saturday exploring Zürich, but we really didn’t get that far. We got off a couple of stops before the main station, and were just going to walk around. I knew about where we were in relationship to the lake, and central Zürich it turned out we were a lot closer to the lake than I thought. The reason we didn’t get very far, is once we hit the lake, we were at the main docks. The Ferrys are just about ready to close down for the season, so most of them are tied up at the docks and someone had the great idea of having a wine festival on the boats. It was lunch time, so we decided to go into the festival and have lunch there.
The lunch was fabulous, but we never left the boats until we had to stumble back to the apartment! 🙂 I have never been much of a wine person, but since we had to pay $70 to get in. I figured I had better drink my admission worth!
Side note this sounds really strange, but in some ways money takes on a different meaning over here. I don’t mean we spend like we have lost our minds. It is simply that incomes and the cost of living are so different than in the midwest. I will honestly be able to say that when we go home, everything is going to seem REALLY REALLY CHEAP!
Back to the wine! So we had the chance to try wines from all over the world. Unfortunately, we were able to work our way through only a couple of continents, before we had to head home. We could have tried for more, but I don’t think either of us would have been able to walk.
We started off in North America, simply because that stand was next to the boat where we had lunch! Julie found some wines she really liked, but when we realized we had to buy a case at a time, and the wine wouldn’t be delivered until February or March we decided to move on.
Our next stop was Portugal. Julie found some wine she really liked, so we bought a few bottles. I did find one wine that was able to be consumed, so we bought two bottles of that wine. 🙂
Next we came back to Switzerland. We have seen a lot of grape vines during our different train trips, but honestly, I didn’t think of wine grapes. I figured they were just regular table grapes. I had never even heard of a Swiss wine business. So we went over to AlpenWine, and started to sample. The sales person was laughing along at my awful German, but he appeared so happy that I was trying, that he helped me with some of the words. At one point he did say he appreciated me trying to speak German. The Swiss do take offense of people moving here, and not trying to fit in. We started talking and he told us the stories of the different wines, and what makes them special. He even called over the Vintner to talk to us. This was where we really started to get my monies worth. We stayed there talking and sampling for about 60 minutes. When you are poured a swallow or two at a time, you do not think about getting tipsy. However, in that 60 minutes we both probably drank 5 or 6 glasses worth. 🙂 Needless to say, we bought a LOT of wine from the Swiss booth.
After Switzerland we visited Argentina. Julie really learned to like Argentinian wines when Kaylee was there. It was a simple way to keep our daughter close. Unfortunately, we really didn’t like any of the wines, so we moved on pretty quickly. We then stopped at another Portuguese Winery, an Italian Winery, and a French Winery. We didn’t find anything special, so we left Europe all together!
Our final stop of the day was Australia. This was another good one. The gentleman behind the counter was not your normal sales person. You could tell he was out of his element. However, he and I started talking. It turns out he is the owner of the Vineyard. We started talking farming…. He then really opened up, and told us about falling in love, and getting married. His wife is the Vintner for a larger winery, and that is where most of his grapes go. However, her boss encouraged her to try and make her own wines. The name of their winery is Lost Penny. Needless to say we bought a case or two from him as well! I don’t think I will ever get to the point where I enjoy wine more than beer or spirits, but knowing some of the story behind the wine certainly makes it more enjoyable.
The idea of everything being closed on Sunday is slowly starting to sink in. We went for a 4 mile walk this afternoon. No pressure to go and “do” something, no worries about running errands. You just have to slow down and experience life. That is still kind of a foreign concept to me. That is one of the reasons I love hunting. I was able to take the time and slow down. However, that was me making a choice. It is harder when the choice is made for you. 🙂 I am sure there is some deep philosophical thought there. Just not sure what it is.
Good stuff as usual. Enjoy Deutschland