On the road again

It was a gorgeous day when I drove from my home town Trier at the Mosel to the airport in Frankfurt. I passed through the hilly country called the “Hunsrueck”, a large plateau with deep forests and not-to-infertile plains where grains, maize and rape seed are grown. After a couple of kilometres clouds appeared and it started to rain.

The yellow of the rape seed fields contrasted beautifully with the surrounding green of the grains, the grass and the trees. From the moving car I took a couple of shots to capture the contrast. Reality is almost always more beautiful than those quick digital camera shots.

I had about two hours for contemplating about life, death and the universe. I love these rare occasions of introspection. I love the short life between the worlds, leaving Germany for the tropics of Thailand. Having left a world behind but not reached the desired destination, leaves me in a kind of vacuum, an emptiness full with feelings.

The last leg of my journey led me through parts of the Nahe and the Rheingau wine regions. At this time of the year the vines appear tender and soft, near the flowering stage maybe, but the green of the leaves is still a light green.

The rainy season would wait for me on the other side of the world. Only the long hours in the narrow plane would be between “me in Germany” and “me in Thailand”, the past and the future, the wines of Germany and the wines of Australia and Thailand of course.

Upper Goulburn Winegrowers Association, Victoria

For some time now our vintners and wine producers association has had a website, but it was work in progress and filled up only step by step. Now the webpage of the Upper Goulburn Winegrowers Association is completed and fully functional. I would like to invite you to check it out.

I am very proud of this new piece of public relations and education. First of all I like the front page with its romantic touch. The subdued colours give it the historical foundation and substance which a new kid on the block usually seems to lack.

It’s typical Australian too since it tell stories, many different ones of the wineries and the other members of our organisation, the grape growers and the ones who do not have a cellar door.

It tells us stories about the region, it’s soils, the climate, the grape varieties, the history and what one can do their in term of leisure and tourist activities. It carries useful information such as maps, news and events. It also features a “wine of the month” where one of the many excellent wines are presented to the public.

Come and visit us, first on the internet and then jump into your car and drive out to the High Country and meet the friendly vintners of the Upper Goulburn Winegrowers Association. See you soon.

Bleak arrival

I arrived from Bangkok on a bleak and cold morning in the middle of March. Three degrees Celsius but dry conditions, is what the pilot predicted. Well, what a chilly morning here in Frankfurt. Where was spring, I thought.

Nahe vineyards in March

I decided against the train, rented a car and drove off to the West. When passing the city of Mainz, I decided to go along the Nahe river, the birthplace of my father. It’s a lovely place. The Nahe is a little know German wine region. I will write a separate blog entry to tell you more about this jewel of a wine region. The Nahe region is very deer to me.

I passed the town of Bad Kreuznach but stopped in Bad Sobernheim. There a strolled through the small town just to move my legs little. It was 7 h in the morning, people were on their way to work. I was greeted by all the people I walked past. That’s the charm of those little German places.

Martinstein, river Nahe and vineyards in the back

I spent almost all my childhood holidays in the house of my grandfather in a small hamlet called Martinstein. Here the last vineyards are to be found. Further West are only rocks and forests. I paused and paid a visit to my grandparents grave. When overlooking the surrounding hills vivid memories of my youth danced before my inner eye. I remembered that my grandmother took me to fetch the milk and that I could never get enough from watching the cows and that I had to be taken by force to come home. I also remember rides on horse carts and later the first tractors.

The city of Kirn

My last stop was in Kirn, a small city and the birthplace of my father. This is a beer drinkers place since the famous Kirner Pils is (or was?) brewed here. I went to Dhauner Strasse to see the house were my father was born and where he grew up. From the castle, the Kyrburg, I took a good look around before heading through the mountains (where I found a lot of snow) to the Trier and the Mosel Valley.

Auld Lang Syne – Die Toten Hosen

I found on the internet a very different version of the Robert Burns song “Auld Lang Syne”. It is from a German rock band called: “Die Toten Hosen” which translates into English as: “the dead trousers”.

Enjoy. Cheers

PS: Any type of wine can be paired with this song. Even non-wine alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks might do.

The Poet’s Birthday – Burn’s Supper in Bangkok

Robert Burns, the portrait at the entrance of the hall

About 100 diners, mostly Scots and their friends, had gathered in the Amari Watergate Hotel in Bangkok to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, Scotlands national bard and its most famous poet. Every year thousands of Scots people worldwide celebrate the life of this great man. This year’s 250th celebration was of course very special.

That was also true in Thailand. The Bangkok St. Andrew’s Society and its chieftain, John McTaggert, had invited to an evening of celebration, and a celebration it was. Our friend Rab Thomas had gathered a group of friends and we were the lucky ones to join in.

“250 years in ice”

The members of the Bangkok St. Andrew’s Society had ample opportunity to show their talents. At past Burn’s Suppers in Jakarta, a Robert Burns impersonator was invited. Though his presentation of the poems and hymns was very professional, it somehow deterred the members of the local society to take the recitations on to themselves.

Mike Brooks did the piping

There is obviously no shortage of talent in Bangkok. The Selkirk Grace was spoken by Willie Christie. When the haggis was presented and stirred, Mike Brooks spoke the address to the haggis. Duncan Niven gave ‘the Immortal Memory’, John McTaggert the ‘toast to the Lassies’, and Louise Blackwood ‘the Lassies Response’. All the speeches were presented in a very witty, pithy, funny, sardonic and enthusiastic way. It was such a pleasure to listen to them.

Also the haggis with tatties and neeps was very good. I enjoyed again the wonderful Scottish cheeses. The wine came from Australia and was quite decent. It belonged to the, what I call, “industrial wine” category. There is no harm in drinking it, just the brand name never sticks.

After dinner we went all outside to bid farewell to the British Ambassador, made a circle, held hands and sang together “Auld Lang Syne” („old long since“). I recognized the song immediately, because its German version (“Nehmt Abschied Brueder”/ farewell brothers) is very well known in my native lands.

I vividly remember when as a boy I first heard the song from our kitchen window. A group of pilgrims had gathered in front of our house in a circle and sang “farewell brothers”, before boarding their buses to take them home.

When we held hands in Bangkok and sang Burn’s song, the magic also worked on us. It is a powerful song, even in German, though the German text is quite different from the English or the Scottish version. What I did not know is that the song was written by Robert Burns. In life learning never ends.

When Robert Burns died at the tender age of 37 in 1796 he left behind 13 children from 5 women. That’s quite an achievement. Obviously Burns loved women and ‘love’ was one of his favourite themes. This is why I present to you Eddie Reader and her version of “My love is like a red red rose”.

Cheers to Robert Burns. See you next year at the Burn’s Supper.

Geoff Achison at the Yarra Glen Grand Hotel

I will have to jump a bit regarding the time line. There is so much to write about. Some of it happened in 2008 but I still want so let you know. The live music with Geoff Achison took place on December 18th I think.

Fortunately, it did not rain. We had been unloading containers the whole day and furniture and other stuff was all over the place. It was hard work and we were very much looking forward to the evening.

It was just my second evening in Australia. It should become a memorable event. Michael, my brother-in-law, had booked a table for a dinner with a music performance by Geoff Achison, a famous blues guitar player, at the Grand Hotel in Yarra Glen.

The girls had a bottle of ‘2005 Yering Station Cabernet Sauvignon’, a very nice wine from the oldest vineyard in Victoria (founded in 1838 ) which is just around the corner from Yarra Glen.

When I went to the bar, I discovered that they had a German beer on tap and could not resist (I was also the driver) to order a Beck’s. The food was solid and we enjoyed the atmosphere.

The Grand was packed with people, young and old to listen to the “legend”: Geoff Achison. He did not disappoint us.

Geoff had to give a few encores before the crowd allowed him to take a rest. Before departing I bought two of his CD’s and had a nice chat with him.

Michael had introduced me to his music years ago but so far there was no opportunity to see him live. His voice, is the voice of a black man and his virtuosity on the guitar is just amazing. Check out his webpage: www.geoffachison.com but Geoff is also on facebook and has a fan website. I love his music, especially the old blues pieces.

This pleasurable evening should be an auspicious start to my holidays in Australia, I thought. Thank you Geoff and cheers folks to four eventful weeks in the country.

The Christmas Market in Trier

The main market square – Hauptmarkt in Trier

I had only about 24 hours for a family visit in Trier, my beloved home town. This is not much time and I needed to buy urgently some supplies. I was in a hurry which is not good when you end up in a Christmas market. Gee it was crowded. I had not expected so many people. After all the media lamented the economic crisis, the downturn, the loss of jobs and income in short a dark and insecure future. Nothing of that could be felt at the Christmas market in Trier. It was packed with people. I was pushed through the masses. One could hear many languages, French, English, Dutch, Luxembourgian and various German dialects.

Children sing Christmas carols

We have learned from other economic crises that people try to forget the dire circumstances by celebrating even more and more intensely than in “normal’ times. Well, that must have been the case in Trier as well. Everywhere people were drinking mulled wine which is good against the cold but also beer and “normal” wines were on offer. It was a cheerful mood; joyous and happy faces wherever I looked. The pictures above and below give you an idea.

Main market square towards Porta Nigra

Steipe – the old town hall

The St. Peter fountain

St. Peter must have been happy too with all these many cheerful Christmas shoppers. After a bath in the crowd I sought refuge in a quiet place and escaped to one of my favourite watering wholes, the wine bar Kesselstatt. I ordered a ‘2007 Kaseler Nies’chen Riesling’ from the Ruwer river, a tributary of the Mosel and listened to the conversations of my neighbours.

It’s good to be home and Christmas is an auspicious time. I let myself be taken in and my mind flowed through the narrow lanes and back streets of the old Roman town. I could smell the smells of my youth and saw faces of people long gone. I dreamt myself away for a while before strolling home. It’s s pity that 24 hours have only 1440 minutes.

Scottish Delight: St. Andrews Ball 2008, Bangkok

Our first social function here in Bangkok was the attendance of the St. Andrews ball in the Amari Watergate Hotel on Saturday 22th November. Wherever we live in Asia, we join the Scottish St. Andrews and the Irish St. Patrick’s Society. The Bangkok St. Andrews Society was established in 1890 by a small group of expatriate Scots to celebrate among others Scottish culture.

A special reunion awaited us in Bangkok, a reunion we were ardently looking forward to. Our good old friend Rab Thomas whom we met many years ago in Jakarta has settled down in Thailand. It was a tremendous pleasure to meet him again. The ball was the right occasion for this reunion.

Rab Thomas and his partner Basha

One of the Pipe bands

It was a lovely evening. About 280 people sat around large tables with delicious food. Entertained by pipe bands, dance performances and so on, we made new friends. At our table there were quite a few Thailand veterans. To listen to their stories was very informative and entertaining, especially for newcomers to Bangkok like us.

A traditional Haggis dish entree

The main course

Also Scotsmen have a sweet tooth

The surprise of the evening: Scottish cheeses

Have you ever heard about Scottish cheeses? Do the names ‘Loch Arthur’, ‘Howgate’, ‘Dunlope’ or ‘Strathkinnes’ ring a bell? Well, then you should rush to get to know them; there is not only whisky in Scotland (by the way “Famous Grouse” was served in lavish quantities). Scottish cheeses are the world’s best kept secret, I would say. Each of them was wonderful and deserved a special mention.

On www.taste-of-scotland.com the above cheeses are describes as follows:

Loch Arthur: traditional farmhouse organic cheddar from Loch Arthur near Dumfries.

Howgate: Established artisan farmhouse cheesemaker, originally from Howgate near Edinburgh, now in Dundee, pioneered the making in Scotland of continental cheeses including Howgate Brie, Camembert and Pentland. Other cheeses include St Andrews, Bishop Kennedy, Strathkinness and Howgate Highland Cream Cheese.

Dunlop: resembles Scottish cheddar with soft texture. Mostly creamery-made in blocks on Arran and Islay but also traditionally in Ayrshire (Burns), near Dumfries and at Perth (Gowrie).

Strathkinness: award winning Scottish version of Gruyere, nearly 50 gallons of milk goes into a cheese! Matured 6-12 months. Limited availability.

These four cheeses are only a select few; there are many more to explore. Please visit the above webpage for more information including sources where you can oder them.

PS 1: Needless to say that the evening ended in wonderful harmony. We went home utterly satisfied. We will definetely come back next year.

PS 2: Wines were also served of course but it was a mass produced wine not worth mentioning.

Fine Dining in Beijing: Grand Mansion Chinese Restaurant 大宅门中式餐饮会所 Da Zhai Men 大宅门

Recently friends in Beijing invited me to a fancy place for dinner. Da Zhai Men – 大宅门, or as it is called in English “Grand Mansion Business Club” (Chinese style) or 大宅门中式餐饮会所, that’s what the brochure says.

The place is a kind of replica of a Ming and/or Ching dynasty style eating place. The decoration is amazing. Though housed in a modern, glass walled, high rise building, the internal architecture makes you feel having entered a distant, forgotten but very exotic world, a world you otherwise see only in historical epic movies or kung fu films.

The entrance is styled as a gate to a compound, a kind of “se he yuan”, or four wing traditional house. I felt like “abducted” into a forgotten world. The restaurant staff is clad in outfits which might also come from the good old times of imperial China, very colourful costumes. I cannot judge their authenticity but I liked the combination of fur, colour, patterns and ornaments. The ambience of the place makes you forget the grim reality of a cold November evening in the capital city of the fastest growing economy in the world.

We had booked a separate room at the second or third floor. We went around one corner after the other until we were led into a cosy little room decorated in the same style with some modern elements. For instance the pictures were framed in modern golden coloured frames depicting modern scenes. The furniture was wooden, wooden were also all the screens and panels, a window simulation was hung with a long brown cloth. The crockery on the table was equally colourful but was not for use.

The menu consisted of a big, equally colourful book with excellent quality photos of the various dishes on offer; captions were in Chinese and English. The photos were interspersed with explanatory texts and pictures of various motives, reproductions of old material on ingredients and the history of the dishes.

The mansion offers “aristocratic” cuisine whatever that might mean, in contrast to royal or simple peoples cuisine. Instead of a regional denomination, the mansion praises itself for creating “modern Chinese fusion” dishes which attempt to blend various traditional and modern influences into new harmonies. To say it from the outset, the food was excellent.

The soup

A fish dish

For my wine drinking friends, the fact that we did not have wine with our meal might come as a disappointment. So I have no clue what the wine list looks like. Instead, we drank some of the finest tea China has to offer, a dark coloured tea from Hangzhou called ‘West Lake Dragon Well tea’.

The event did not lend itself to picture taking. I dared to take only a few but in order to not create too much disturbances I quickly put away the camera. But rest assured the food was exquisite. The Mansion is a dining experience of the noble kind indeed.

Address:
Grand Mansion Business Club
Wanquanzhuang, Haidian District
Wanliuxingui Mansion, No. 28
Beijing
Tel.: +86-1058720188 or 89
Fax: +86-010-58720133
海淀区万泉庄28号万柳东路万柳新贵大厦
Daily 11am-2pm, 5pm-9.30pm

And the poet says…..

Recently, my friend Jim Riddell gave me copy of a collection of poems by Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) in a Chinese-English version. To my shame I must admit that I had never before heard about the poet Khalil Gibran.

Khalil Gibran (Source of the photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalil_Gibran)

From the internet (wikipedia) I learned that he is the third best-selling poet in history after William Shakespeare and Laozi. Khalil Gibran was born in present day Lebanon. He was a Lebanese-American artist, poet, and writer who had migrated to the USA in 1895. This is where he also died (in New York City) at the tender age of 48 only.

I selected the following excerpts from a poem on eating and drinking for you:

“And in the autumn,
when you gather the grapes of your vineyards for the wine press,
say in your heart.
I too am a vineyard,
and my fruit shall be gathered for the wine press,
and like new wine I shall be kept in eternal vessels.

And in winter,
when you draw the wine,
let there be in your heart a song for each cup;
and let there be in the song a remembrance for the autumn days,
and for the vineyard,
and for the wine press.”

A good day to all of you.