Monday, March 16, 2009

A Rhine Valley Cruise

This post has been a long time in the making. Loads of weird and interesting things have happened to me since I last posted and I'll try to quickly catch up chronologicaly with whatever I can still remember.

Sometime towards the end of last summer I went on some official work (I still had a job then) to Frankfurt, Vienna and Barcelona for about 10 days. In between frantic meetings and mad dashes from hotels to airports to yet more hotels I managed to have myself a pretty good time.

Frankfurt was a limp, weary smudge of a city. The most famous landmark is apparently the airport and they have guided tours of the place...I said "Nein, danke!" to myself and instead took a guided day trip to the Rhine Valley.

The guided tour itself was a classic tourist trap replete with a witty english speaking guide, an insipid fixed menu meal at a quaint restaurant and some half hearted wine tasting. For some reason the waitress at the restaurant got a little frisky with me and even playfully lifted a chair and made as if to hit me with it. I couldn't be bothered to decipher her heavily accented english...furthermore, she was a big made Bavarian girl so I didn't get too excited.

The Rhine valley was an amateur photographer's delight with picture postcard settings at every languid curve of the river. It was the last week of summer and the Germans far outnumbered the tourists at all the restaurants and inns that dotted the shore. There were hundreds of families in cars and scores of gangs on superbikes ripping up and down the autobahn - everybody generally having a great time.

At one place there was a sudden spike of excitement when a stark naked, beautiful blond girl walked down to the shore and then weaved her way through a crowd of perplexed but amused holiday makers. She was followed every step of the way by a cameraman and I guess it must have been a photo shoot for a magazine or a TV show or something.

I shit you not about this - I have atleast one photo of the girl. But you'll have to wait a while till I load it 'coz I don't have a laptop at the moment (and why that's so is another story).

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