out of season 6

The graveyard at Lotzbeuren, immaculately maintained. See the first 'out of season' post below for context..

out of season 5

mere gratuitous prettiness..

out of season 4

I had visions of renting a bike to pootle up and down the Mosel. Apparently the river is unusually high. Here's the bike path.

out of season 3

In the early 90's, those go-go days, the egregious Esther Dyson together with some other overpaid theoreticians, proclaimed 'the overthrow of matter'.

Here it is the Year of our Lord 2008 in a bold new century, and we're still pushing coal laboriously upstream in order to fuel the power stations that move our electrons around. Watching these barges shoving along, it looks like they are going uphill. In several senses they are I suppose, but it's still odd to watch.

out of season 2

Since I can't find a way to format the layout of pictures in Blogger (always get slapped up on the top), my carefully-conceived layouts get bloggered. I give up, one post per picture.

Mosel vine, showing evidence of a moister climate than is usual for winegrowing regions. I expect a stony feel to the wine. No country for cotton socks, this.

As it turned out, everything was still closed until Easter weekend. Eventually found a place to taste wine in Zell/Mosel, but they had run out of trocken wines. All the sweet ones tasted identical to me. I could not distinguish any character, only sweetness. At dinner in Reil, I'd had a sweet Riesling, but it had lots more going on than just sweetness, rather a delicious gulp in fact. I figured I'd get a Beerenauslese just for the fun of it, but they'd run out of that too and I had to settle for a Riesling Eiswein.

In the hotel, I was going to drink the half-bottle of white in the minibar, but it turned out to be French. According to mine hostess, there are only 3 vineyards on the whole Mosel that produce half-bottles: they bottle in late April, so by March there's usually none available. Extraordinary.

out of season

Back in Germany on company business. Notes from a previous visit are on a different branch, but still apply for the most part.

Currently in a little hotel in Reil on the Mosel river. The Mosel itself looks more like the Big Muddy, and it's raining as is usual in March. My hotel is exactly as it appeared in the brochure, a small converted house, quite charming - except for the scaffolding all over the outside and blocking my view of the river. Humph. Oh well mine hostess is sweet, the town itself is quaint, I'm sure I can find some wine to drink here.

Upon arrival at the airport, they had no cars at all. I took the first one offered, ein plutokretz-mobil. Shown above at the graveyard outside Lotzbeuren, a town I had not planned to visit. It has a fine old cobbled town square with a church big enough to house the entire town. The graveyard is possibly the best-maintained in all Christendom. See picture above, in 'out of season 6'.