March is the time of year when our village, and a lot of others in the Rheingau region, has wine stands. In Breckenheim, the wine stands occur every other week. They’re hosted by clubs as fundraisers, but they are also a great opportunity for people in the neighborhood to get together and be social.
The first Breckenheim wine stand of 2024 actually occurred at the end of February, which is a bit unusual. I believe that one was hosted by the Christian Democrats political group. Bill and I didn’t attend that one, since we aren’t Germans, and no one cares how we vote (although they’d prefer we don’t vote for Trump). Also, the weather wasn’t so great that night.
Then there was another one on March 8th, but Bill was in Bavaria, and I didn’t really want to go drink wine by myself. I’m sure I would have had some company eventually, if only because some people might have wanted to know where Bill was. But I was also making a concerted effort to avoid drinking alcohol while Bill was away, and I succeeded.
We decided to go to last night’s wine stand, as the weather was basically pleasant, and it had been too long since our last one… As you can see by the photos, it was a well attended event. I got a kick out of the Mayor saying “Hi” to us as we passed the wine kiosk. He knows who his American residents are, I guess. I don’t know the Mayor well at all, but I have noticed that he works very hard and really seems to want to do good things for Breckenheim. In fact, I’ve noticed that he’s organized a lot of nice events for our Wiesbaden suburb, since we moved here in late November 2018.
For most of the evening, we sat alone at our table. I think the locals are often wary of sitting with us foreigners. But then, a very nice older couple, along with a couple of ladies about their age, asked if they could join us. It turned out the wife of the gentleman could speak English fairly well, but her husband couldn’t. Bill conversed with the man in his imperfect German. I surprised myself by understanding much of what was said. Speaking German, however, is still pretty painful for me. I’m better at singing in German (memorizing the words). 😉
We had a very nice conversation with the couple, although I think I shocked the lady when we were talking about Donald Trump and I said that my mom had advised me not to go back to the U.S. if I could avoid it. I’m sure things are not as bad as they look from over here… but I do know that the USA is not the same country it was when we left there in 2014.
We decided to leave when the sun was completely down, after we’d had a few glasses of the fine local wines. We said goodbye to the couple and assured each other we’d meet again at a future wine stand. I really like Breckenheim. It’s probably my favorite of the three German towns we have lived in so far. The people are very friendly, and it’s surprisingly social. When we told the folks that we’d also lived near Stuttgart, they said “Here, it’s better.” But they also said they don’t know people living down there. I liked the Stuttgart area fine, but people up here really are much easier to get to know. They’re better at small talk, as far as I can tell… or, so it seems, anyway.
Here are a few photos…
And here are a few spring photos from walks with Noyzi…
I’m not sure what we’ll do today. The sun is going in and out of the clouds, and it’s a bit chilly and windy. I may work on finishing reading my latest book.