Currywurst and Champagne

Day: 101-102
Km travelled: 298.1km
Steps: 14 755
Location: Kandern, Germany

December 16-17, 2017

With the end of the year fast approaching, the Scottish poet’s classic new year hymn comes to mind and is the perfect prelude to this post: Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?  We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.

I knew that a friend from my university days now lived in Germany however I didn’t know precisely where.  I sent a  “hey, if I happen to be visiting your city do you want to get together for drinks’ email  and that turned into the most generous “travelling can be really expensive, why don’t you come stay with us”? offer in return.  I’ll admit, I felt guilty for accepting, as I always do, for fear of taking advantage and imposing on people.  I did nonetheless and was rewarded with a fantastic splendid time.

I have been enormously blessed so far this adventure to be welcomed so warmly by old and new friends as well as family.  It’s touching to see such kindness and generosity thrown my way.  My friend Jeff even had his mother visiting from out of country and still agreed to host me.

I left St Moritz and once again boarded my old faithful friend, the Swiss train.  Despite the fact that this was not a scenic train, another beautiful ride awaited me.  Let’s face, this is a country where everything is scenic!

View from the train…. priceless!                  

Over the course of the next day and a half, I was treated to some authentic German living, including a wonderfully prepared German home cooked meal of roulade (meat, bacon, mustard rolled around a pickle)!  Delish!  And what’s visiting a German town during the holidays without checking our a Christmas market!  We headed to the town of Laufenburg, Germany, which sits just at the Swiss-German border.  It’s separated by a river from its Swiss counterpart, also named Laufenburg.  There was a Christmas market on both sides, as well as on the connecting bridge.  Somewhere on the bridge you’re supposed to know to switch currency as you’ve crossed into another country. 

Laufenburg – German side

Laufenburg – Swiss side

It was at the market that I had the chance to sample to traditional German snacks: currywurst (left) and berliners (right).  I had seen many places for currywurst throughout my travels however I had yet to sample this German fast food. And boy am I kicking myself for that now!  This had to be one of my favourite snacks so far; it was absolutely delicious!  Currywurst is a steamed then fried pork sausage smothered in a type of curry ketchup.  Yum!  Anyone knows a good place in Canada for currywurst?? 

This is likely one of the downsides of travelling: sampling delicious food and drink and not having them available in your home area or not being prepared authentically!  One brief taste of paradise and then its gone.

Until you taste the next most delicious thing, that is!  Berliners are a type of filled donut, traditional in Germany.  Typically filled with marmalade or jam, this christmas market vendor decided to up her game and filled these little morsels of deep friend goodness with various types of alcohol.  That’s right, boozy donuts!  The little plastic pipette could be filled with Bailey’s, Grand Marnier or another type of liquor and all you have to do is poke your berliner all over and squeeze out the happy juice.  As I am now a sophisticated woman of the world, I clearly opted for the champagne one!

We followed up our Christmas market outing with a quick stroll to visit a nearby castle ruin.  It quickly turned into more of a ‘here-are-the-ruins-however-its-cold-so-let’s-go-in-and-have-something-to-drink-and-a-snack” outing, which is usually how I like my ruins! 

After such a warm welcome into the home of this amazing family, I almost didn’t want to go (plus their baby daughter is the most adorable little thing who would just walk up to me and give me cuddles – it’s like she knew I hadn’t been hugged in a while and tried to make up for it!  Sweetheart!).  However, it was off on the overnight bus to head to my last stop of this part of my travels: Paris.  Oh la la!