The featured photo is from this time last year, which was a more fruitful time for my travel blog…
We didn’t do much this weekend, mainly because Bill has to go to Stuttgart this week on business. Our big thing yesterday, after I mowed the lawn, was to watch a German movie on Apple TV called The Lives of Others. I had watched the movie when Bill was gone last month, and I thought he’d really enjoy it. So even though we had beautiful weather yesterday, I suggested that we watch it together.
The timing of watching this movie is timely, given that German Reunification Day was this past Thursday. Of course, that’s not a holiday for us Americans, but Germans get the day off to celebrate the reunification of East and West Germany. The Lives of Others, which came out in 2006, is set in the mid 80s in East Germany. It’s a fictional story about a hardened Stasi agent who has an attack of conscience while spying on a playwright whose actress girlfriend has caught the eye of a government official.
What makes the film especially cool is that the guy who wrote and directed it, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, was born in Cologne, West Germany in 1973, and was only 16 years old when the Berlin Wall fell. I am a year older than Florian is. I remember when it fell, too. Bill was actually living here when it happened.
When Bill lived in Germany the first time, from 1987-1990, he spent a couple of months guarding the Czech-German border. When we visited the Czech Republic the first time, back in 2008, Bill was very nervous crossing the border, because it was his old territory. He half expected to be busted by the Czech border patrol. Of course, nowadays, you can just sail right through the border with no issues. But we’re old enough to remember when that was definitely not the case.
On Friday night, there was a wine stand in our village, but we opted not to attend. It was chilly and cloudy, and we didn’t feel like drinking cheap German wine in the cold. Instead, we drank German beer, listened to my enormous playlist, and ate Armenian/Greek food from the Ararat Olymp Grillhaus in Mainz, which was available for delivery. It was delicious! We had lavash, khinkali, gyros, fries, flatbread, and tzatziki, and there was plenty left over for lunch yesterday. It’s nice to have Armenian/Greek/Georgian food so close and available to us for delivery. I do kind of miss our evenings at restaurants, though.
As for today, our big outing was to the PX/commissary, to buy me some cosmetics and food for the coming week. The commissary was pretty busy and it looked like it needed to be stocked. I guess the supply chains were running low.
I think the rest of the day will be spent on some mundane chores that need to be done before Bill leaves. We are hoping to get away sometime this month after we go to Stuttgart for our dental cleanings. We just have to line everything up with the dentist and the dog kennel. 😉 I’ve been looking for potential long weekend spots. I think we’ll stay in Germany, but I am not averse to going to a country bordering Germany, as long as it doesn’t involve a super long drive. Maybe it’s time for another trip to France.
Other than that, I don’t have much to report. The Apple Wine fest went on Friday and Saturday in Wiesbaden. It might have been nice to attend that yesterday. I forgot about it, though, until it was too late. Oh well.
I’m glad fall is here, but I kind of dread the weather turning cold and shitty. But at least I’m not being eaten alive by mosquitos anymore.
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