Three awesome days in Germany.
Today is our third and final day in Germany. After spending the last two days drinking copious amounts of alcohol, eating various German dishes (including Mett – raw pork mince on toast for breakfast) and exploring the local towns and cities, today is dedicated to chilling out.
On Friday we visited Henny's parents and ate a very traditional, and super tasty, German breakfast.
Afterwards we drove to Munster, a really beautiful German city full of churches and a cathedral, although I’m not sure if I could tell you which one that is as they all look equally grand and huge.
The sun was shining so we grabbed some delicious ice cream and took a ten minute walk out of the centre of the city to the annual spring fair.
I persuaded Henny and Jake to go on the ferris wheel, even though they’re both scared of heights and the following ride was hilarious, watching them both grip the wheel in the middle and peer anxiously over the edge. They then went on the ‘Breakdance’ ride which basically just threw them around in circles for five minutes. I sat that one out because thanks to my motion sickness it would have been a very messy ride.
We ate a late lunch at a restaurant called Hans im Glück which served mainly burgers. We sat in the sun on the street to eat and accidentally got filmed for a German game show.
I forgot to take a picture at the beginning of my meal because I was too excited, so here is my half eaten bunless burger…it was delicious.
Jake was way more on point and managed to get a picture of his burger while it still looked like a burger.
That evening some friends of our hosts, Henny and Matze, came to visit and drink beer.
When all the beer in the house was drunk we got on the bikes and cycled in the dark, along the river into town to a “Proper German bar!!”. It was a small, smoky room, not unlike a British pub. We all huddled around a table in the corner and when the waitress arrived there was a quick conversation in German before she disappeared. She returned with six beers and we were told not to move our beer mats as she would mark them with how many beers we had each had. She would keep bringing more beers until we told her to stop… we probably should have told her to stop earlier as Jake definitely felt the effects the next day.
We then rode our bikes home, drunk in the dark, a routine we repeated every night and still I have no idea how I managed to avoid the river.
The journeys on the way to town, in the daylight are always much more enjoyable!
Note to self: when taking a selfie on a bicycle, make sure the camera strap isn't covering your face.
Last night there was a party in the town, I think someone said it was in dedication to clogs, but I’m not sure there was actually a legitimate reason. The Germans don’t really need a reason to drink a whole lot of beer anyway, they will do it party or no party. So from about 4pm we were in the streets along with the rest of the town, drinking beer after beer and stopping occasionally to eat proper German food which included currywurst (curried sausages), doner kebab and backfish (deep fried fish)…I’m not sure how German these dishes all originally were, but they were delicious, so no complaints here.
At one point it started pouring with rain so we moved our table into the doorway of a jewellers – they didn’t seem in the least bit bothered.
The night went on in a happy and hectic fashion. Friends came and went and we had muddled English/German conversations with strangers, the alcohol making the language barrier irrelevant.
A local band played through the night and we were so impressed with their English. They sang many songs in our language and the German audience all happily sang along.
Today we had a very welcome slow start (and luckily no hangovers!!) before heading down to the Kanu (canoe) Club, where Matze is the chairman. He is an awesome white water kayaker, he came in the top 100 in the World Championships in Austria. Today he took us out on the, thankfully, calm river that runs through the town of Nordhorn.
We got a bit rained on, but nothing us Yorkshire folk can't handle!
This evening we are finishing off an awesome trip with a traditional German meal of beef and sauerkraut, a German film and maybe a beer or two…
We are so grateful to our fantastic hosts and lovely friends Henny and Matze! They really went out of their way to make sure we had an awesome, authentic German experience, and we definitely did.
