June 6th.
Roast potatoes and salad for lunch, with a rosé for Valerie and a beer for Joel. After we’d finished eating, we decided we’d like one more drink so Joel called out to the waitress requesting ‘the same again, please.’ The waitress responded with a note of alarm ‘just the drinks, right!?’ We both had a good giggle. Lunch was delicious, but we couldn’t manage it a second time.
June 8th.
Descending the Schlossberg we chanced upon a sausage shop, so decided to stay for dinner. Joel ordered the Alsatian Sausage Salad expecting to receive both sausage and salad. What arrived was a truly formidable pile of sausage slivers in a mustard dressing.
June 9th.
There is a beautiful farmers market on Münsterplatz. There are fresh flower stalls laden with sunflowers and roses in every colour. The sun is warming the leaves of potted herbs, perfuming the air with rosemary, basil, sage. On the other side of the cathedral red and white striped tents shade workers busy frying dozens and dozens of fat, long sausages and mountainous piles of onions. People wander, some grazing on punnets of fresh, plump mixed berries. The cakes and fresh breads are so handsome, and the whiff of a fresh Beinenstich cake made me wonder if it was worth the stomach upset, but I was sensible. With breakfast bratwursts in hand we sought shade by what we thought was an unused cathedral doorway, only to find ourselves surrounded moments later by German tourists. They watched us with hungry eyes as we dropped onions and mustard down our fronts.
Later:
We left the market in search of coffee and as we rounded the corner we discovered two rotund men; one playing a double bass, the other an accordion. It was so cheerful and chipper that we’ve decided such music should be the soundtrack for all sunny days.
We spent the afternoon walking. The banks of the Dreisam river were peppered with discarded shoes, their owners sitting on river rocks letting the water rush over their feet as they brushed colours onto paper. Children in swimsuits and floaties made the banks muddy with their playing, the afternoon bright with their laughing. Couples in Wellingtons paced the banks, scanning for a fruitful spot to cast-off. Further along, dogs dutifully followed thrown sticks into the shallows.
June 12th.
A memory from last night: one of the band members from Steve’s Lindy Corner event told us that his fiancé is from Sardinia. Without missing a beat Joel said ‘oh, she’s a sardine?’ He received a big laugh for his efforts.
