A weekend in Germany

First off, this post is really really late. Last month, I really needed to get out of the office and the weather for the weekend looked good, so I convinced my officemate to come along to Germany for the weekend. The first stop was Mainz, a really nice small city and home to the Gutenberg bible, which was the point of the visit. The next stop was an old monastery not far away.

As we neared it, there were lots and lots of cars parked along the side of the road, which seemed very odd for the far end of a dead end country road. As we got up to the driveway for the monastery, the fire department was there directing traffic (in german). They asked if we were going to the Ostereiermarkt (literally, Easter egg market), and I said, no, to the convent. So, instead of directing us off into the field with everyone else, they directed us into the parking lot for the monastery where we got a space right up close. After walking around and taking pictures a bit, we realised that the Easter egg market was taking place at the monastery, and that we'd just managed to talk ourselves into a really good parking spot. So naturally, having stumbled on to a popular-looking something with a name as curious as Easter egg market, we of course stopped in to check it out. I remember having been to something like this before in Germany, so I was excited to run into one again. Inside, it was about 100 stands each with intricately decorated eggs. Some had patterns and some had very detailed paintings of different types. Many had extremely high price tags. There were also different kinds of crafts at some of the stands, but the focus was definitely on eggs. I got a couple of the cheap 7eur ones as gifts.

The next stop was the hotel. Instead of staying in a big town, I wanted to be out in the country. So, I looked at the map and spotted a big green (i.e. park) area not far from my planned route and searched the internet for hotels there. I found one on the edge of a small town for 35eur/night (ridiculously cheap). So cheap, in fact, that I wasn't sure what to think. But, my rule is that if you go to any little hotel in a little town in Germany, you will get a good room and a good meal, so I made the booking. When we got there, I tried to say in my best (lousy) german that I had a reservation, but before I could, the lady handed me my key and asked what time I wanted breakfast. I just assumed we were the last guests to check in and didn't need to ask our names. At dinner, the diningroom was completely setup, but the whole evening we were the only ones there. We realised that we weren't just guests, we were the guests. And then I noticed a sign saying breakfast from 0830, so not only were we the only guests, we had just asked them to get up half an hour earlier than normal for breakfast in the morning. Still, the room was very nice, the meal was very good, the people friendly, and the breakfast buffet in the morning perfectly good. Not bad for 35eur!

The Sunday was spent doing some various siteseeing and driving back.

The pictures can be found here.

Statues

This weekend was the first really nice weather in a long, long time. It was still cold, but the bright sunshine made it feel warm and the whole world went out to the beach to enjoy it. I took the opportunity to take pictures of a very amusing collection of statues that are located just off the beach. I'm glad that someone (in this case the sculpture musuem) put the effort into creating some nice public art. It's not worth trying to explain in words what all the statues do, just that they are sculptures of stylized people in different situations or stories and done in a playful way. The link to them is here.

Thieving Spanish Bastards

My weekend in Madrid started off, strangely enough, in Brussels. This was by far the best part of the trip, walking around Grand Place, having waffles, and having a few belgian beers with friends.

Madrid, though, is fast on its way to becoming one of my least favourite cities. Unluckily for me, this is compounded by the weather. They say the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain; but this weekend the rain in Spain falls mainly in Madrid. Worse, ever since stepping out of the airport here I have felt uneasy. As soon as I stepped onto the metro to leave the airport, people sat next to me and asked for money, other people would stare or stand unnecessarily close. By far, it was worse on the metro (which is otherwise clean, cheap, and efficient), but there was still a bad vibe from some people on the street too. Ultimately, I did get get my phone stolen from my pocket by a group of three guys on the metro just before leaving a station. They had other teammembers on other cars in the train, so it looked to be a big professional effort. That would be unlike the Madrid transit police who could care less when I reported it to them 2min later.

Madrid itself seems only okayish. The museums are quite good, though Guernica was closed this week, which makes it a bit like going to Paris and not seeing the Mona Lisa. I would recommend against the monastery de las Descalzas. The guidebooks recommend it, but don't tell you they only let 20 people in every 20 minutes. It is an interesting place, but the wait can get quite long and I'd say if you had to wait more than 30min to get that it's not worth the bother. Some places can be rainy and still have their charms, Madrid just seems a little depressing in the rain; maybe because it is supposed to be sunny all the time here.

Day two started cloudy and worked its way toward partly cloudy. Started with a tour of the royal palace and continued from there walking around the old part of the city seeing several churches and squares. As I suspected, Madrid looks much better the more and brighter the sun gets. Finished with a dinner of Tapas and microbrews, which were quite nice on both counts. Still, in all, Madrid only gets a score of okayish. I suspect that the truly interesting parts of Spain are outside the cities.


The final day of the trip, the actual work portion was quite memorable. The meeting seemed to be ending early and our Spanish hosts informed us that they would be taking us for lunch. They made special arrangements with the restaurant to open at 1pm to serve us. That time being a bit early for lunch in Spain. What followed was an extraordinary lunch. A meat & cheese and a vegetable appetizer, wine, two kinds of paella, dessert, after meal drink, and there's probably more that I have left out. All of it was excellent and when we left the restaurant, it was 1630. That may be a lunchtime record for me that will never be broken.

Not too many pictures from the trip, but here they are.