Drinking the good stuff

We all know that New Year's Eve is good for celebrating with friends and drinking a toast to the end of one year and the beginning of the new. We celebrated with lots of really good champagne. Real champagne. From the Champagne region of France. If it doesn't come from the Champagne region, it's sparkling wine. There are some really, really, really good sparkling wines (I'm a big fan and don't let Mr. HH know you have some because he will tip it back and drink it like it's water), but real champagne is a whole other entity. We had 2 bottle of Veuve Clicquot (next year I'll buy a magnum-the same as 2 bottles just larger, which is optimal for champagne, or so I've read) and very fine bottle of G. H. Mumm (both from Reims, France). They were smooth and delicious and I drank waaaay too much. Happy 2010!

Tonight we got together with TOM (The Other Man) and TOM's wife for dinner. Earlier in the day we had all gone to this Italian restaurant supplier called Pronto and gathered food stuffs and wine for a big fat meal. I made squid ink pasta with a tomato/olive sauce (outstanding) and caprese salad (tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil and high quality olive oil). TOM made penne with a bolgenese sauce, set out bowls of stuffed olives (one stuffed with sun dried tomatoes and sliced up some Italian peperoni thing (I don't really know what it was, but Mr. HH loved it) and super thin slices of Pecorino cheese. Compared to Pecorino, Parmesan tastes like sawdust. It's that good.

At Pronto, we also spend about 45 minutes perusing their wine selection. It's HUGE and runs the gamut from 2 Euro up to 60+ Euro a bottle. We found 4 bottles of wines in the 6-12 Euro range and all left smiling. I didn't think we'd open them all, but since we were with TOM, who knows his stuff when it comes to wine, I was happy to keep buying. I'm a white wine kind of girl, but TOM found 3 reds he thought I should try (he's on a mission to find a red I'll like) and Mr. HH picked out a bottle of blush.

We prepared dinner (Indy loved the squid ink pasta!) and cracked open some wine. The first red I thought was okay. It didn't burn my throat or make me feel like a dust storm had just blown through my mouth, but it didn't excite me. We ate some more and opened another red. Oh, this red was delicious! I couldn't believe it. A red I actually liked! It was from the Campagnia region of Italy and grown on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius. Apparently the minerals in the volcanic soil gie it the mellowness. Fantastic! It was made from the oldest type of grapes brought to Italy by the Greeks. Yum, yum, yum! Since I was so happy with it, TOM decided to crack open a more "serious" wine for him and Mr. HH. I tried it, but it made my nose burn and my eyes water and my tongue retreat to the back of my mouth wondering why I would do something so horrible to it. I went back to my happy wine and all was well. They finished off the evil wine and decided to open the rose. It was actually quite good. I switched to it after my bottle of red was empty (sadness) and realized I was quite woozy. I almost never (with the exception of NY Eve) drink more than a glass or two of wine (Sangria doesn't count-you don't realize there's alcohol in it until it's too late) and probably had about 6. SIX! In the space of 2 hours! What is wrong with me? Between the 4 of us, we finished off all 4 bottles of wine with dinner. That is a lot of vino people. Too much! It's been about 3 hours and I'm still a bit tipsy. Thank heaven for spell check, otherwise my post would read something like this: Wedrabk a lotof wihe tonight with idnner adn I cna barerly sse ot type.

Mr. HH and I have decided to start a wine journal to keep track of what we like. TOM has an ELABORATE journal on Xcel that is up to 275 different wines since Jan 07. He has a few simple book journals but filled them so quickly he decided to go digital.

Do you have a specific wine (or champagne/sparkling wine) that you like? Do you keep a wine journal? Are you a red or a white fan?

You know who likes wine? Johnny Depp. That's who. Drinking it is just one more way we grow closer every day. Good heavens I need to go to bed. Love you all. Especially you Johnny. Call me. We'll have drinks.

Weekend getaway-driving the autobahn and drinking beer (not at the same time)

Mr.HH was hoping to get home early on Friday so we could leave,but of course that didn’t happen and we ended up not leaving Heidelberg until almost 6:30pm. I wasn’t too worried though and figured we’d get there no later than 10:30. I did not realize that Murphy had hitched a ride in the back though. Oh Murphy, you’re such a bad travelling companion. Around 9pm, about 100 miles from Garmisch, Murphy decided it was time to wake up and show us what he was made of. My poor sweet Ulrika started making a weird sound and a warning light came on that read “Extremely low tire pressure. Pull over.” WHAT? Oh, no! Ulkrika! I pulled over as much as I could (there are no shoulders on the autobahns for some reason) and Mr. HH got out to check it. We had an extremely flat tire. We were about 4 miles from the closest Rasthof (usually has a gas station, hotel, restaurant or two, cafe, small shop and bathrooms) and weren’t sure we would make it. Fortunately, we’d gone less than a kilometer and found a call box service area where I could pull over. There are call boxes all along the autobahns and I was so happy! I could call ADAC and they’d come fix us up in no time. Huzzah! Mr. HH was not keen on calling them though because he’s a manly man and could fix it himself. Oooookaaaaaaay. We paid for ADAC, but let’s not use it. We unpacked the pack of the car (of course you have to remove everything to get to the spare), and Indy and I sat on the side of the road in the cold and watched Mr. HH be a he-man. The jack has never been used before and was really difficult for him to use. I tried hard not to stare at the call box and nearly lost it when Indy,who was watching Mr. HH struggle, leaned against me and said in his “Spongebob narrator”voice “Twenty…….hours…….later.” OMG, I love that boy. I laughed so hard. Fortunately Mr. HH didn’t hear him because he was not in the mood for humor.

We made it to our hotel slowly (sooooo slowly) without further incident, got our room key from the safe (24 hour reception? No way!). They give you a code to access the outside wall safe and let you find your own way. We were not in the main hotel, but the “suites” in the building across the street. We crashed hard and woke up to a beautiful and chilly Bavarian morning. This is the view from the patio off the back of our suite.

Jealous? It’s so picturesque and quaint. It made me want to climb a mountain and sing. Well, maybe not climb a mountain, but maybe take a train or lift up one and sing.

Do you remember the photo I showed you last week of our hotel from the website? I wondered if it would really look like that. Here is the website photo and the one I took:

Pretty good, huh? The website photo was taken from the roof of the house next to our building. The flowers are different, but other than that, I think they represent themselves well.

We met up with TOM and TOM’s wife in the restaurant (I love that breakfast comes with most hotels in Europe) and made a plan for the day, while the super awesome front desk lady called all over the G-P area to find a garage that was open on Saturday (not many are) to replace Ulrika’s tire. She finally found one and we zipped over to drop Ulrika off before heading to the bahnhof to catch the train to Munchen (Munich). Here are some photos from the train.

TOM and Mr. HH TOM’s Wife and me

If you look behind me and to the right, you’ll notice that the teenager sitting behind me was wearing Lederhosen. Awesome!

We arrived in Munich and followed the crowd of people wearing Lederhosen and Dirndls to the Theresienwiese where the Oktoberfest is held. I did not realize the scale of this thing! It is massive!!! It’s like a HUGE fair with beer halls. Indy and the girls wanted to ride the rides, but we had stuff to see first!

These were taken inside one of the beer halls, but I can’t remember which one. Reservations for tables inside the halls need to be made a year in advance and cost approximately $600 per table (a table will seat about 10 adults-closely). Needless to say we did NOT sit inside a beer hall. Check out the decor though.

Can you believe that? Can you believe those women carry so many of the 1ltr beer mugs? And some of them hold 3 or 4 in each hand! The mugs themselves weigh about 2-3lbs, plus the weight of the beer. Talk about strong arms.

The outside of the beer halls were pretty amazing too.

We tried to get a seat in several of the outside biergartens (just outside the beer halls themselves), but that was next to impossible. Mr. HH and TOM were ready to give up, but TOM’s Wife was crazy persistent. She found a group of teens who had a table (outside) who wanted to leave to check out the rest of the fest, but not lose their table. We offered to hold their seats and so we sat down with the friends who didn’t want to go explore. Some of them were perfectly fine, despite a litre or two of beer, while others were sloppy drunk. Slop-py. When they found out we were Americans, they went crazy. “We love Americans!” they said at least 100 times in the 2 hours we sat there. It was so funny. They were really sweet kids. Here’s photos of the outside beirgarten and the kids we sat with. BTW, notice the size of the pretzel Indy is holding.

Oscar is the one waving and was not drunk, nor was the boy in the green whose name I can’t remember (he’s from Moscow though, I remember that),but the boy in the batman hat was drunk. Crazy drunk.

And now for some incredibly “controversial” photos. Don’t freak out, it was just a sip and if you look at the third photo, you’ll notice that we have nothing to worry about.

Beer was not Indy’s thing. Which is good, but he asked if he could try it and we figured one little sip at Oktoberfest wouldn’t hurt.

After the other teens came back and we gave rounds of hugs, there were a few more “We love Americans!” we left to go ride a few rides, take in the sites, eat some yummy treats and head back to Garmisch before the crowds got too thick (it’s not a place for kids after 5pm).

We had so much fun, but were completely pooped by the time we made it to the train. We ate at a little Irish Pub next to our hotel and then headed back for some much needed sleep. Here’s Indy about 2 minutes after he laid down.

Come back tomorrow for photos of a flea market in Oberamergau, the monastery at Ettal, the 1936 Olympic stadium and the Partenach gorge.

Sangria is the devil. Sweet, delicious devil. Or: Oh my aching head

Yesterday was M's "Brofriend's" birthday. He's the guy M went to Verdun and Bastogne with over the Memorial Day weekend and got up to all sorts of shenanigans, including going off the marked path in Verdun which is a big no-no as there are still unexploded ordinances left over from WWI all over the place. I'm amazed they made it home in one piece.
Anyhoo, we went over to their house (they live in our building, but in the other stairwell) for dinner and cake (seriously, they had me at cake). They are red wine drinkers. Serious red wine drinkers. They know stuff about it. I find it all very confusing, but am trying to learn a little. I am not a fan of red wine. Thanks to them, I've tried tons. TONS. S (the birthday boy) is on a mission to find a red that I will like. So far, not so much. He's come up with a few that I don't mind, but not something I'd actually choose to drink. I'm a white wine girl. I prefer the sweeter ones. I love a good Riesling or Gewurstraminer. My favorite white is an ice wine (or Eiswein), which is made from grapes that are picked while frozen on the vines. Oh, man is it good. Also, crazy expensive. Figures, huh? Hold on, sorry, back to my story.
We ate dinner on Iron Man plates (cause we're cool like that and the birthday boy was a big IM fan growing up) and S broke open 3 bottles of wine. I tried them all (including the one we gave him as a gift-a red from the Umbrian region of Italy), but just wasn't feeling them. M has learned to really like reds from hanging out with them and helped S down the bottles. A (his wife) drank a few glasses of red, but decided to break out the Sangria she had made several hours earlier. Now we were talking! Red, I'm not so crazy about, but turn some into Sangria and I'm with you! This pitcher was HUGE. Like Kool-Aid Man huge. And delicious. The thing about a good Sangria is that you don't realize you're drinking alcohol and you just keep drinking. A also adds spiced rum to her Sangria making it extra potent. After M and S had finished off the 3 bottles of wine, he switched over to Sangria (there was a little less than half the pitcher left). We were feeling it. Thank goodness we only had to walk across the top floor of the building. We got Indy to bed (miraculously) and managed to take the dogs out before crawling into bed.
I awoke this morning (thanks to Indy) to a slightly pounding head. And by slightly, I mean it felt like a marching band was practicing inside my skull. Heck, it might have even been a whole parade. So not cool. I haven't felt like this since college. Oh, Sangria, you are sweet and delicious, but you are a bad friend. A bad, bad friend that I will see again (soon) even though I know I shouldn't.
It is 10 am here and I'd like to point out that M is still in bed. He rolled over when I got up and mumbled something that I couldn't quite understand and went back to sleep. He was probably telling me to make sure I take my happy pills.