Yeah- I drank there too :)

After school today all my new “colleagues” went on a faculty trip to the local vineyard. The Ahr valley is apparently known for its red wine and vineyards, which happen to be situated on the sides of the mountains that make up the Ahr valley.

There in the Ahr, it struck me once again that the Germans are incredibly different than Canadians. To a Canadian, light walking means maybe 10 or 15 minutes to reach a destination. To a German, light walking almost always means hiking- in this case an hour of strenuously hiking up and down the side of a friggenly picturesque mountain that really rapidly lost all of its appeal. All so we could end up exactly where we started, to go to the actual winery and drink some local vintages.

Yum. I’m not really into wine but these were so good. Part of the tour was a wine tasting and lunch, but I couldn’t decide between the red and the white. The red being the winery’s specialty, but the white being my more preferred variety. So, my friend/colleague, Evelyn (I met her in Altenburg- she was actually the teacher for my course) was trying to help me decide and the bartender was a like, here- I’ll give you some of both. So, I looked like the ultimate wine-o in front of all my brand-new colleagues, coming to the table with a glass of each. They were both pretty good. I got the sweetest ones that the winery offered. I found out today, through experience, that the sweeter wines are the ones that are way less offensive to my palate. I also got to keep the cups that I drank out of. They had a cute little poem on the back:

Wenn Du das Ahrtal ganz willst sehn,

Musst Du durch den Mayschosser Weinkeller gehn.

Basically it just means if you want to see all of the Ahr Valley, you need to go through the Mayschosser Winery. Their vineyards are the ones that grow up the slopes of the mountains that surround the tiny little village on the valley floor.

It was a pretty good afternoon :)